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THE MODERN STUDENT'S LIBRARY 



SARTOR RESARTUS 

BY 

THOMAS CARLYLE 



THE MODERN 
STUDENT'S LIBRARY 

EACH VOLUME EDITED BY A LEADING 
AMERICAN AUTHORITY 

WILL D. HOWE, General Editor 

This series is composed of such works as 
are conspicuous in the province of literature 
for their enduring influence. Every volume 
is recognized as essential to a liberal edu- 
cation'and will tend to infuse a love for true 
literature and an appreciation of the quali- 
ties which cause it to endure. 

A descriptive list of the volumes published in 

this series appears in the last pages 

of this volume 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



THE MODERN STUDENT'S LIBRARY 



SARTOR RESARTUS 

BY 

THOMAS CARLYLE 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

ASHLEY THORNDIKE 

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 



(X<Ct /U^^y^\A^<) (WM 




CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON 



****** 



Copyright, 1921, by 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

A 



OCT -8 1921 



©CU627138 



CONTENTS 

BOOK FIRST 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Preliminary 1 

II Editorial Difficulties 6 

III Reminiscences 11 

IV Characteristics .23 

V The World in Clothes 30 

VI Aprons . . 36 

VII Miscellaneous-Historical .... 39 

VIII The World Out of Clothes .... 43 

IX Adamitism 50 

X Pure Reason 55 

XI Prospective 61 

BOOK SECOND 

I Genesis 71 

II Idyllic 79 

III Pedagogy 89 

IV Getting Under Way 106 

V Romance 118 

v 



vi CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

VI Sorrows of Teufelsdrockh .... 132 

VII The Everlasting No 142 

VIII Center of Indifference 151 

IX The Everlasting Yea 163 

X Pause 176 

BOOK THIRD 

I Incident in Modern History . . . 184 

II Church-Clothes 190 

III Symbols 193 

IV Helotage 201 

V The Phcenix ........ 205 

VI Old Clothes 212 

VII Organic Filaments 216 

VIII Natural Supernaturalism ... . 226 

IX Circumspective ....... 237 

X The Dandiacal Body . . . . . . 242 

XI Tailors 256 

XII Farewell 260 

Glossary 267 



INTRODUCTION 

Sartor Resartus was written during the years 1830 
and 1831 in the lonely farmhouse of Craigenputtock, 
whither the Carlyles had gone in 1828 after two years 
of married life in Edinburgh. Though the quiet out- 
of-door existence had been good for Carlyle's health, 
the loneliness and bleak climate had worn on his wife, 
so that both were ready for an escape from solitude 
and were looking longingly toward London. But their 
poverty was dire. Carlyle had failed to get a profes- 
sorship or to make a sufficient income from his writings, 
and was giving largely from his scanty means for the 
medical education of his brother. At one time while 
the Sartor was in progress, he was reduced to f ve pounds 
and saw no prospect of any income for months to 
come. As he labored over the manuscript with that 
painful effort which always accompanied his writing, 
he must have felt that it was a matter of life or death, 
of success or of failure from which he could scarcely 
recover. ' It is a work of genius, my dear,' declared 
Mrs. Carlyle when the book was done. He borrowed 
,£50 from Jeffrey and went off to London to sell the 
manuscript. 

He failed to find a ready market, and the Sartor did 
not appear until two years later (1833-34) and then 
at reduced rates by instalments in Eraser's Magazine, 
where ' it excited the most unqualified disapprobation.' 
There were two years more of poverty and worry, spent 
mostly at Craigenputtock, before the Carlyles ven- 

vii 



viii INTRODUCTION 

tured to take a house in London and try to make their 
way in the literary metropolis. In the meantime a young 
American who was making his first visit to England, 
found his way across the moors to their farmhouse in 
order to meet the genius whose writings had stirred him 
in far-off Boston. The Carlyles agreed that Emerson 
was ' one of the most lovable creatures ' and hailed him 
as friend and fellow mystic. He undertook the ar- 
rangements for publishing the Sartor in the United 
States, where it first appeared in book form in 1836. 
It was not published in England until two years later, 
when Carlyle's French Revolution had established his 
position as one of the foremost of English men of let- 
ters. 

Up to the time of the Sartor Carlyle's writings had 
been mainly about German literature. He had worked 
as a translator, appreciator, and critic, but scarcely as a 
creative artist with a message for the world. One pur- 
pose indeed in his going to Craigenputtock had been 
to work out in solitude and quiet his own faith, and to 
give it an expression that the world would heed. He 
had been striving to set himself at right with the uni- 
verse, and he wished to tell the universe what he thought 
about it. A great many books have carried messages 
which have been the outcome of their authors' spiritual 
struggle, and Carlyle may have felt a likeness between 
himself and St. Augustine or Rousseau or Wordsworth, 
but the example that he had most in mind was that of 
his revered master, Goethe, who had passed through 
much troubled experience to a complete reconciliation 
with life and work. Carlyle desired to produce a book 
which should, like Wilhelm Meister, tell of an appren- 
ticeship which passed into a mastery of life. 

A more specific suggestion came from Swift's Tale of 



INTRODUCTION ix 

a Tub, which furnished Carlyle with the clothes meta- 
phor. It should be noticed that Carlyle employs this 
metaphor in two somewhat different ways. First, all 
ranks, offices, creeds, organizations, may be regarded as, 
the coverings, symbols, or worn-out clothes of reality. 
Second, society, the universe, space and time may be re- 
garded as the mere appearances or manifestations or 
clothes of the divine and ideal reality. By the first 
use of the metaphor, Carlyle has a means for satire or 
criticism of the existing state of things. By the sec- 
ond use of the metaphor, he has a means for expressing 
the fundamentals of his philosophy and religion. As 
Goethe had said, * the world in the living garment of 
God.' 

Wilhelm Meister and the Tale of a Tub might offer 
suggestions and methods, but Carlyle found great diffi- 
culty in adapting these to his own powers of expres- 
sion. He was thirty-five, and had experiences and be- 
liefs of his own which he wished the world to heed. 
He tried the two most popular literary forms of the 
day, a novel and an article for the reviews. The novel 
* Wotton Reinf red ' was begun during the first months 
of his married life, but did not get beyond seven chap- 
ters. The hero, disappointed in love, seems likely to 
attain some renewal of resolution through idealistic 
philosophy — when the novel breaks off. The review ar- 
ticle was on Clothes, and this took the title ' Teufels- 
drockh/ but it was unacceptable to Fraser, and was re- 
turned to Carlyle to become the basis of Sartor. He 
wrote to his brother, ' I can devise some more biography 
for Teufelsdrockh, give a second deeper part in the 
same vein, leading through Religion and the nature of 
Society, and Lord knows what/ 

It was through this experimenting that the Sartor took 
form. Book I corresponds roughly to the article on 



x INTRODUCTION 

Clothes. It serves as an introduction to pique the reader 
through its mystifications in regard to the German 
philosopher and his amazing new theories and porten- 
tous style, but it also carefully states and restates the 
essence of the clothes philosophy. Book II tells the 
story of the hero, utilizing passages from the discarded 
' Wotton Reinfred,' and recalling much from Carlyle's 
own experience. It culminates with the spiritual con- 
version in which the hero faces and vanquishes the Ever- 
lasting No, i.e., the power of doubt ard denial, and from 
which he emerges to proclaim the Everlasting Yea, the 
gospel of work. In Book III, now that our interest 
has been won for this imaginary hero who has conquered 
doubt and found a gospel, Carlyle is free to set forth 
this gospel more at large and to announce his own 
ideas about the needs of the universe. But both his 
criticism of utilitarianism, of democracy, and of Rous- 
seauism, and his advocacy of an organization of labor, 
hero worship, and a new purpose in literature are based 
on the idealistic philosophy which he proclaims most 
eloquently in the chapter on Natural Supernaturalism. 
The pretense that the book was an account and in 
part a translation of the philosophy and biography of a 
German professor was a manifest hoax that could not 
deceive readers acquainted with a few words of the Ger- 
man language. The pretense, however, was serviceable 
enough as a device for presenting to the public a young 
man known chiefly as a writer on German literature who 
wished now to be heard for himself. Some sort of a 
disguise, such as that of Teufelsdrockh, was necessary 
if he were to win a hearing as a prophet. But the rather 
elaborate fooling about the professor and his friend 
Herr Hofrath Heuschrecke and the University of 
Weissnichtwo and the six paper bags, which puzzled or 
annoyed the readers of ninety years ago, is often a little 



INTRODUCTION xi 

tedious for the reader of to-day. We no longer look 
upon the Germans as an unknown and little appreciated 
race of mystics, idealists and speculative philosophers, 
and we are neither deceived nor delighted by the many 
German words and phrases. Much of this framework 
must be regarded as belonging to the year 1830 and not 
very essential for posterity. Moreover, the scheme ex- 
hibits many inconsistencies. It is not easy to accept as 
one person the venerable German mystic, Professor 
Devilsdung in Part I, the romantic youth suffering the 
pangs of poverty, disappointed love, and religious doubt 
in Part II, and the discourser upon the dandiacal novel 
Pelham and the state of labor in England in Part III, 
But the figure of the professor is only a convenient 
mask, which the real author uses or discards as he 
wishes. 

The book gains its unity of appeal not through its 
general plan or its German disguise, but through the 
power and individuality of its expression. There can 
be no doubt that it is written by one man, and that man 
a genius. Readers when the book first appeared, and 
ever since, have complained a good deal of its style, of 
its mannerisms, obscurities, strange coinages, and Ger- 
man contortions. Carlyle certainly did not write in 
the approved manner of a popular novelist like Bulwer 
or of a popular review writer like Macaulay, and he 
did employ capital letters and an occasional idiom after 
the German fashion, and he perhaps caught something 
of the rhapsodic tone of Jean Paul Richter. But chiefly 
he wrote like himself. He abandoned the restraints and 
conventionalities that had heretofore held him back in 
writing for the reviews. He let himself go. Under the 
German disguise he could give his humor or eloquence 
an unabashed opportunity, and he could even invent a 
new word or risk a picturesque epithet. He wrote as 



xii INTRODUCTION 

he talked — with irony, rough humor, fierce invective, ten- 
derness, laughter, and fiery eloquence. It is not a model 
style, but it is the man himself, full grown, and it has 
all the characteristics which distinguished his writings 
for the rest of his life. 

Moreover, he thought not as a reviewer or a novelist, 
but as a prophet. He is tremendously in earnest and 
he is bound to make us readers take heed. He annoys, 
puzzles, overwhelms us, but incessantly demands our at- 
tention. Pathos and eloquence are lavished in order to 
make us hear. It is not the style of a writer trying to 
make a finished, a perfect creation of beauty; it is the 
expression of a great imagination, of a man who is 
bound at any cost of words to stir and arouse us. He 
preaches the destruction that is to come, and proclaims 
the way of salvation. Literature for him is not a thing 
of nice sentences and carefully selected words and 
pleasant rhythms, but a means to set the universe right, 
a voice in the wilderness that will make tremble the 
palace and temple. 

Sartor Resartus revealed a new prophet to the Eng- 
lish-speaking world, a powerful personality with a mes- 
sage. That message rests on a certain philosophy 
which, as we have noted, is summed up repeatedly in 
the course of the book. It is that union of idealism 
and individualism which had been implicit in most of 
the English romanticists, and which was later very ex- 
plicit in Browning and Emerson. We have seen its es- 
sence stated in the metaphor of clothes. The sole real- 
ity in the universe is conceived as mind or spirit, of 
which the individual personality is a part and a revela- 
tion. This spiritual reality, or God, unfolds and reveals 
its purpose in the course of civilization as well as in 
the attributes of individual souls. This gives a sanction 
not only for individual volition and activity but also 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

for Carlyle's doctrine of hero-worship. Soul is reality, 
and therefore the individual must have faith in him- 
self and in God who moves through him, and proceed 
to busy himself with the work of the world. But the 
great spirits among men are the chief revealers of God, 
and hence should be the chief leaders of mankind. Re- 
ligion lies in the mystic (i. e., not rational or intellectual) 
recognition of spirit, and in the worship by the lesser 
of the greater souls. 

Carlyle's idealism was indeed preached not as a 
metaphysics, but as a religion, not as an intellectual 
system but as a creed reached by faith and imagina- 
tion. This faith had been attained through his own per- 
sonal struggle with the universe, and in order to under- 
stand both its points of difference from similar creeds 
and also its points of application to conduct and belief, 
we must look a little more closely at this personal strug- 
gle of Carlyle's and at the universe he wished to reform. 
In other words, the Sartor is not merely a restatement of 
idealistic philosophy, but is both the expression of Car- 
lyle's personality and an appeal for making the world 
better. What are the important elements of his life 
and character which speak in the book? And what was 
the state of the environment against which his person- 
ality reacted? What was the state of the world in 
1830 in which he summoned the spirits of Englishmen 
to battle? 

Carlyle's biography is too well known to be retold 
here, except as it helps to make plain the significance 
of the Sartor. There are many things in the youth of 
Teufelsdrockh which are reminiscent of Carlyle's: the 
picture of childhood in the peasant's cottage, the boy at 
school who has promised his mother not to fight, the 
association with the rich and fashionable (Carlyle as 
tutor in the Buller family), and the story of Blumine, 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

compounded perhaps of Carlyle's relations with Mar- 
garet Gorden, Kitty Fitzpatrick, and Jane Welsh. But 
as Carlyle protested it is "symbolical myth all except 
that of the incident in the Rue St. Thomas de FEnfer 
(Book II, Chap. 7), which occurred quite literally to 
myself in Leith Walk, during three weeks of total sleep- 
lessness, in which almost my one solace was that of a 
daily bathe on the sands between Leith and Portobello.' 

That victory over the Everlasting No took place in 
June, 1821, when Carlyle was twenty-live. By that 
time he had found that he could not enter the ministry, 
for which his parents had sent him through college; he 
had found school teaching intolerable, and had tried 
and abandoned the study of law. He was poor, harassed 
by dyspepsia, ' a rat gnawing at the pit of the stom- 
ach/ by religious doubts and difficulties, by a sense of 
the misery of the poor. He was earning a small pit- 
tance by hack writing but saw no opening to a career 
of any sort. Then, after three weeks' sleeplessness, 
' The Everlasting No ' had said: ' Behold thou art father- 
less, outcast, and the Universe is mine (the Devil's)/ to 
which my whole Me now made answer : ' I am not thine, 
but Free, and forever hate thee.' 

This defiance of the powers of doubt and denial from 
which Carlyle dated his spiritual new-birth was imme- 
diately preceded by two events which may have con- 
tributed to his conversion and which were, at all events, 
of great importance in his life. He had just begun 
reading German literature and philosophy, and he had 
just met for the first time the brilliant and beautiful 
woman whom he was later to marry. His progress to 
the Everlasting Yes was made with the aid of Goethe 
and Fichte and Jane Welsh. From the German came 
a fresh statement of idealism and individualism, from 



INTRODUCTION xv 

Jane Welsh a new incentive to trust himself and go to 
work. 

When Carlyle wrote: ' Close thy Byron, open thy 
Goethe . . . Love not Pleasure, love God ' — he was a 
little unfair to Byron and he was preaching a gospel 
that he had learned in his Ecclefechan home long before 
he heard of Goethe, — the old gospel of renunciation 
and work. But for him Byron stood as a symbol of emo- 
tional unrest, of the personal search for happiness, and 
Goethe, who had passed through a time of emotional 
storm and stress to a confident and serene activity, was 
the one living man who commanded hero-worship. Car- 
lyle seems to have felt that he was separating himself 
from the romanticists and pointing the way to a prac- 
tical ethics. Nearly all the romanticists, including 
Rousseau, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Byron, 
had believed, like Carlyle, in the power and significance 
of the individual. Most of them had also believed in 
the life and reign of the spirit; none of them had been 
materialists or rationalists. But they had been inter- 
ested in the individual's emotions, in states of feeling, 
in what men are or ought to be^ rather than in what 
they ought to do. Carlyle differed from them in plac- 
ing his emphasis on the volitional side of personality. 
Exercise your will, make your choice, he cried. ' Be 
no longer a Chaos but a World, or even Worldkin. 
Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infini- 
tesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name. 
'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then/ In 
other words, believe in yourself and go to work. 

What is this universe in which the individual soul 
must labor? For Carlyle, it was the world after the 
Napoleonic Wars, in the era of reaction which lasted 
from Waterloo to the Reform Bill. The rationalism of 
the eighteenth century had advanced to a denial of the 






xvi INTRODUCTION 

supernatural, and this rationalism had been applied by 
the French Revolution which undertook to destroy 
church and state and to found on the ruins of the old 
a new religion and government with promises of liberty, 
equality, and fraternity. This great effort at reforming 
human affairs had resulted in long and devastating wars, 
in the temporary success of a master tyrant, and then in 
a revulsion of Toryism which saw the only hope for civi- 
lization in the reestablishment of church, state and so- 
ciety on a pre-revolutionary basis. Further, in England 
the industrial revolution was transforming the ways of 
living as well as those of manufacture and introducing 
to a perplexed world all those problems of the modern 
competitive system which are still with us. Carlyle, 
wrestling with the devil in Edinburgh of 1821, saw his 
satanic majesty exhibited in all the misery and squalor 
of the poor in that era of general business depression. 
A Tory like Scott saw the only salvation in holding fast 
to the old and in resisting all reform. A romanticist 
like Byron flung his great personality into bitter satire 
and attack on everything that was. Should one trust his 
own emotion, or should one trust to the Holy Alliance, to 
the union of church and property, for which in England 
the Duke of Wellington stood stalwart? 

There was one other solution, that of the Benthamites, 
or Utilitarians, or Philosophical Radicals, who were 
making their theories heard especially in connection with 
the new science of Political Economy. They too were 
individualists but not emotionalists. They analyzed 
human life rationally, and they demanded the reorgani- 
zation of society according to their formula, the greatest 
happiness of the greatest number. They substituted cal- 
culation for intuition in ethjcs, and laissez faire for 
government regulation in politics, and individual rights 
and privileges in place of caste and organization in 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

society. In the Sartor Carlyle is bitter against this 
* gospel of Mammonism,' this substitution of a search 
for happiness instead of for duty. But he nevertheless 
regarded the Utilitarians with some sympathy, for they 
were the one group seriously bent on radical reform. 
His whole view of life was opposed to theirs, but he was, 
like them, a radical. 

Carlyle had not yet come to see the full meaning of 
the industrial revolution, which he was later to set 
forth in Chartism and Past and Present. But he saw 
the modern world preeminently as a place of toil, the 
smithy in the Black Forest serving as a symbol of this 
nexus of work which binds closely together modern men ; 
and he paid eloquent tribute to the dignity and worth 
of manual labor. He saw his England in terms of the 
rich and the poor, the idle aristocrats and the unedu- 
cated manual workers, and he likened Dandyism and 
Drudgism to ' two bottomless boiling Whirlpools ' likely 
to spread into a * true Hell of Waters and Noah's deluge 
is out-deluged ! 

Society was in danger of another and greater French 
Revolution which might destroy it utterly. He dismisses 
rapidly and with vituperative epithets all elements and 
theories which are offering remedies. The church and 
religion seem dead, mere old clothes. Kings and aris- 
tocracies are likewise outworn and meaningless symbols. 
The Return to Nature, Democracy, Universal Suffrage, 
Utilitarianism, and Political Economy are all rejected 
as quack nostrums. But in the dying Phoenix of Society, 
he discerns some organic filaments from which a new 
world may be constructed. Chief of these is Hero- 
worship, and second, there is literature, but both must 
be based on faith in spirit. Any reliance on the com- 
mercialism and materialism so rampant, or on the 
rationalism so threatening, will doom society to death. 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

Begin with a renewal of faith, a divine and indestructible 
spiritual purpose moving through society and man, and 
the doctrine of hero-worship becomes a practical appli- 
cation of this faith to politics, economics, or religion. 
The hero is the strong man, the man in whom God most 
manifests himself, and we must learn to recognize and 
obey such heroes. For the present time the heroes 
needed are the executives, the administrators, the organ- 
izers, men who will really govern, will organize labor, 
will lead the people. Literature may serve to aid and 
interpret these leaders, to reveal them by history and by 
prophecy, and to preach hero-worship as a sort of link 
between the mystical absolute and this every-day work- 
ing world. But practically, hero-worship means, recog- 
nize some one as your superior. 

This gospel of hero-worship, like Carlyle's applica- 
tion of his faith to the reform of industrialism, was to 
receive fuller exposition in later books. But the Sartor 
in Book III not only contains suggestions for much of 
his later teaching and preaching, it also enforces and 
applies the faith in spirit and the gospel of work to 
England of his own day. The great effect of the book 
was as a moral tonic which stirred the young men of 
the next generation, Arnold, Kingsley, Huxley, Tyndall 
and many others, to earnest and serious efforts to make 
the world better. The book was by no means merely 
an emotional exhortation, it called men to work, and it 
also pointed to the work to be done. It was not an 
appeal merely to save your own soul, but to make the 
world better by work. 

It has gone on repeating its message for nearly a 
century. It has helped to direct our literature to the 
task of a serious criticism of life, an earnest effort at 
reform. Is its message still a vital one? We are facing 
a new world at the end of a World War, far more 



INTRODUCTION xix 

terrific and devastating than the wars of Napoleon. 
Progress has had an interruption. The clocks of all 
the nations have been set back. There must be a great 
and a long materialistic and commercial reaction to 
make good the physical losses. We shall hear many 
voices, some reactionary and others revolutionary, as 
contradictory and uncertain as those heard in England 
after Waterloo. Shall we not find something to listen 
to in this voice of a century ago which proclaimed with 
such fervor the immanence of the spirit and the duty of 
work? Is there not for our time a need of insistence 
on individual responsibility, on the importance in the 
universe of human will? Have we no dandies and 
drudges? Have we no need of heroes who will lead 
rather than talk? no need of a literature devoted to the 
ideal of a better world? Along with much talk of 
equality, do we not need to recognize and acclaim 
superiority? As I turn back to-day to the Sartor my 
own impression is that Carlyle is now speaking to a 
world very like that in which he lived, and that, what- 
ever its mistakes in emphasis or prejudice, his sermon is 
as much needed now as then. 

Ashley Thorndike 



SARTOR RESARTUS 



BOOK FIRST 
CHAPTER I 

PRELIMINARY 



Considering our present advanced state of culture, 
and how the Torch of Science has now been brandished 
and borne about, with more or less effect, for five thou- 
sand years and upwards ; how, in these times especially, 
not only the Torch still burns, and perhaps more fiercely 
than ever, but innumerable Rush-lights, and Sulphur- 
matches, kindled thereat, are also glancing in every 
direction, so that not the smallest cranny or doghole in 
Nature or Art can remain unilluminated, — it might 
strike the reflective mind with some surprise that hitherto 
little or nothing of a fundamental character, whether 
in the way of Philosophy or History, has been written 
on the subject of Clothes. 

Our Theory of Gravitation is as good as perfect: 
Lagrange, it is well known, has proved that the 
Planetary System, on this scheme, will endure forever; 
Laplace, still more cunningly, even guesses that it could 
not have been made on any other scheme. Whereby, at 
least, our nautical Logbooks can be better kept; and 
water-transport of all kinds has grown more commodious. 
Of Geology and Geognosy we know enough: what with 
the labors of our Werners and Huttons, what with the 

1 



2 SARTOR RESARTUS 

ardent genius of their disciples, it has come about that 
now, to many a Royal Society, the Creation of a World 
is little more mysterious than the cooking of a dumpling; 
concerning which last, indeed, there have been minds to 
whom the question, How the apples were got in, pre- 
sented difficulties. Why mention our disquisitions on 
the Social Contract, on the Standard of Taste, on the 
Migrations of the Herring? Then, have we not a 
Doctrine of Rent, a Theory of Value; Philosophies of 
Language, of History, of Pottery, of Apparitions, of In- 
toxicating Liquors? Man's whole life and environment 
have been laid open and elucidated; scarcely a fragment 
or fiber of his Soul, Body, and Possessions, but has been 
probed, dissected, distilled, desiccated, and scientifically 
decomposed: our spiritual Faculties, of which it appears 
there are not a few, have their Stewarts, Cousins, Royer 
Collards: every cellular, vascular, muscular Tissue 
glories in its Lawrences, Majendies, Bichats. 

How, then, comes it, may the reflective mind repeat, 
that the grand Tissue of all Tissues, the only real Tis- 
sue, should have been quite overlooked by Science, — 
the vestural Tissue, namely, of woolen or other cloth; 
which Man's Soul wears as its outmost wrappage and 
overall; wherein his whole other Tissues are included 
and screened, his whole Faculties work, his whole Self 
lives, moves, and has its being? For if, now and then, 
some straggling broken-winged thinker has cast an owl's- 
glance into this obscure region, the most have soared 
over it altogether heedless; regarding Clothes as a 
property, not an accident, as quite natural and spon- 
taneous, like the leaves of trees, like the plumage of 
birds. In all speculations they have tacitly figured man 
as a Clothed Animal; whereas he is by nature a Naked 
Animal; and only in certain circumstances, by purpose 
and device, masks himself in Clothes. Shakespeare 



PRELIMINARY 3 

says, we are creatures that look before and after: the 
more surprising that we do not look round a little, and 
see what is passing under our very eyes. 

But here, as in so many other cases, Germany, learned, 
indefatigable, deep-thinking Germany comes to our aid. 
It is, after all, a blessing that, in these revolutionary 
times, there should be one country where abstract 
Thought can still take shelter; that while the din and 
frenzy of Catholic Emancipations, and Rotten Boroughs, 
and Revolts of Paris, deafen every French and every 
English ear, the German can stand peaceful on his 
scientific watch-tower; and, to the raging, struggling 
multitude here and elsewhere, solemnly, from hour to 
hour, with preparatory blast of cowhorn, emit his Horet 
ihr Herren und lasset's Euch sagen; in other words, 
tell the Universe, which so often forgets that fact, 
what o'clock it really is. Not unfrequently the Ger- 
mans have been blamed for an unprofitable diligence; 
as if they struck into devious courses, where nothing was 
to be had but the toil of a rough journey; as if, for- 
saking the gold-mines of finance and that political 
slaughter of fat oxen whereby a man himself grows fat, 
they were apt to run goose-hunting into regions of bil- 
berries and crowberries, and be swallowed up at last in 
remote peat-bogs. Of that unwise science, which, as 
our Humorist expresses it, 

' By geometric scale 
Doth take the size of pots of ale;' 

still more, of that altogether misdirected industry, which 
is seen vigorously thrashing mere straw, there can noth- 
ing defensive be said. In so far as the Germans are 
chargeable with "such, let them take the consequence. 
Nevertheless be it remarked, that even a Russian steppe 
has tumuli and gold ornaments; also many a scene that 



4 SARTOR RESARTUS 

looks desert and rock-bound from the distance, will un- 
fold itself, when visited, into rare valleys. Nay, in any 
case, would Criticism erect not only finger-posts and 
turnpikes, but spiked gates and impassable barriers, for 
the mind of man ? It is written, ' Many shall run to 
and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.' Surely the 
plain rule is, Let each considerate person have his way, 
and see what it will lead to. For not this man and 
that man, but all men make up mankind, and their united 
tasks the task of mankind. How often have we seen 
some such adventurous, and perhaps much-censured 
wanderer light on some out-lying, neglected, yet vitally 
momentous province; the hidden treasures of which he 
first discovered, and kept proclaiming till the general 
eye and effort were directed thither, and the conquest 
was completed; — thereby, in these his seemingly so aim- 
less rambles, planting new standards, founding new 
habitable colonies, in the immeasurable circumambient 
realm of Nothingness and Night! Wise man was he 
who counseled that Speculation should have free course, 
and look fearlessly towards all the thirty-two points of 
the compass, whithersoever and howsoever it listed. 

Perhaps it is proof of the stunted condition in which 
pure Science, especially pure moral Science, languishes 
among us English; and how our mercantile greatness, 
and invaluable Constitution, impressing a political or 
other immediately practical tendency on all English 
culture and endeavor, cramps the free flight of Thought, 
—that this, not Philosophy of Clothes, but recognition 
even that we have no such Philosophy, stands here for 
the first time published in our language. What English 
intellect could have chosen such a topic, or by chance 
stumbled on it? But for that same unshackled, and 
even sequestered condition of the German Learned, 



PRELIMINARY 5 

which permits and induces them to fish in all manner 
of waters, with all manner of nets, it seems probable 
enough, this abstruse Inquiry might, in spite of the 
results it leads to, have continued dormant for indefinite 
periods. The Editor of these sheets, though otherwise 
boasting himself a man of confirmed speculative habits, 
and perhaps discursive enough, is free to confess, that 
never, till these last months, did the above very plain 
considerations, on our total want of a Philosophy of 
Clothes, occur to him; and then, by quite foreign sug- 
gestion. By the arrival, namely, of a new Book from 
Professor Teufelsdrockh of Weissnichtwo ; treating ex- 
pressly of this subject, and in a style which, whether 
understood or not, could not even by the blindest be 
overlooked. In the present Editor's way of thought, 
this remarkable Treatise, with its Doctrines, whether as 
judicially acceded to, or judicially denied, has not re- 
mained without effect. 

' Die Kleider, ihr Werden und WirJcen (Clothes, their 
Origin and Influence) : von Diog. Teufelsdrockh, J.U.D. 
etc. S tills chweig en und Co9 nie . Weissnichtwo, 1831. 

' Here,' says the Weissnichtwo' sche Anzeiger, ' comes 
a Volume of that extensive, close-printed, close-medi- 
tated sort, which, be it spoken with pride, is seen only 
in Germany, perhaps only in Weissnichtwo. Issuing 
from the hitherto irreproachable Firm of Stillschweigen 
and Company, with every external furtherance, it is of 
such internal quality as to set Neglect at defiance/ 
***** A work,' concludes the well-nigh enthusiastic 
Reviewer, ' interesting alike to the antiquary, the his- 
torian, and the philosophic thinker; a masterpiece of 
boldness, lynx-eyed acuteness, and rugged independent 
Germanism and Philanthropy (derber Kerndeutschheit 
und Menschenliebe) ; which will not, assuredly, pass 
current without opposition in high places; but must and 



6 SARTOR RESARTUS 

will exalt the almost new name of Teufelsdrockh to the 
first ranks of Philosophy, in our German Temple of 
Honor. 

Mindful of old friendship, the distinguished Profes- 
sor, in this the first blaze of his fame, which however 
does not dazzle him, sends hither a Presentation-copy 
of his Book; with compliments and encomiums which 
modesty forbids the present Editor to rehearse; yet 
without indicated wish or hope of any kind, except what 
may be implied in the concluding phrase: Mochte es 
(this remarkable Treatise) auch im Brittischen Boden 
gedeihenl 



CHAPTER II 

EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES 

If for a speculative man, ' whose seedfield/ in the 
sublime words of the Poet, ' is Time,' no conquest is 
important but that of new ideas, then might the arrival 
of Professor Teufelsdrockh's Book be marked with chalk 
in the Editor's calendar. It is indeed an * extensive 
Volume,' of boundless, almost formless contents, a very 
Sea of Thought; neither calm nor clear, if you will; 
yet wherein the toughest pearl-diver may dive to his 
utmost depth, and return not only with sea-wreck but 
with true orients. 

Directly on the first perusal, almost on the first delib- 
erate inspection, it became apparent that here a quite 
new Branch of Philosophy, leading to as yet undescried 
ulterior results, was disclosed; farther, what seemed 
scarcely less interesting, a quite new human Individual- 
ity, an almost unexampled personal character, that, 
namely, of Professor Teufelsdrockh the Discloser. Of 



EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES 7 

both which novelties, as far as might be possible, we 
resolved to master the significance. But as man is 
emphatically a proselytizing creature, no sooner was 
such mastery even fairly attempted, than the new ques- 
tion arose: How might this acquired good be imparted 
to others, perhaps in equal need thereof: how could the 
philosophy of Clothes, and the Author of such Philoso- 
phy, be brought home, in any measure, to the business 
and bosoms of our own English Nation? For if new- 
got gold is said to burn the pockets till it be cast forth 
into circulation, much more may new truth. 

Here, however, difficulties occurred. The first 
thought naturally was to publish Article after Article 
on this remarkable Volume, in such widely-circulating 
Critical Journals as the Editor might stand connected 
with, or by money or love procure access to. But, on 
the other hand, was it not clear that such matter as must 
here be revealed, and treated of, might endanger the 
circulation of any Journal extant? If, indeed, all 
party-divisions in the State, could have been abolished, 
Whig, Tory, and Radical, embracing in discrepant union ; 
and all the Journals of the Nation could have been 
jumbled into one Journal, and the Philosophy of Clothes 
poured forth in incessant torrents therefrom, the attempt 
had seemed possible. But, alas, what vehicle of that 
sort have we, except Fraser's Magazine? A vehicle all 
strewed (figuratively speaking) with the maddest 
Waterloo-Crackers, exploding distractively and destruc- 
tively, wheresoever the mystified passenger stands or 
sits; nay, in any case, understood to be, of late years, 
a vehicle full to overflowing, and inexorably shut! Be- 
sides, to state the Philosophy of Clothes without the 
Philosopher, the ideas of Teufelsdrockh without some- 
thing of his personality, was it not to insure both of 
entire misapprehension? Now for Biography, had it 



8 SARTOR RESARTUS 

been otherwise admissible, there were no adequate docu- 
ments, no hope of obtaining such, but rather, owing to 
circumstances, a special despair. Thus did the Editor 
see himself, for the while, shut out from all public 
utterance of these extraordinary Doctrines, and con- 
strained to resolve them, not without disquietude, in the 
dark depths of his own mind. 

So had it lasted for some months; and now the Vol- 
ume on Clothes, read and again read, was in several 
points becoming lucid and lucent; the personality of its 
Author more and more surprising, but, in spite of all 
that memory and conjecture could do, more and more 
enigmatic; whereby the old disquietude seemed fast 
settling into fixed discontent, — when altogether unex- 
pectedly arrives a Letter from Herr Hofrath Heusch- 
recke, our Professor's chief friend and associate in 
Weissnichtwo, with whom we had not previously cor- 
responded. The Hofrath, after much quite extraneous 
matter, began dilating largely on the ' agitation and 
attention ' which the Philosophy of Clothes was excit- 
ing in its own German Republic of Letters; on the deep 
significance and tendency of his Friend's Volume; and 
then, at length, with great circumlocution, hinted at the 
practicability of conveying ' some knowledge of it, and 
of him, to England, and through England to the dis- 
tant West ' : a work on Professor Teufelsdrockh ' were 
undoubtedly welcome to the Family, the National, or 
any other of those patriotic Libraries, at present the 
glory of British Literature ' ; might work revolutions in 
Thought; and so forth; — in conclusion, intimating not 
obscurely, that should the present Editor feel disposed 
to undertake a Biography of Teufelsdrockh, he, Hofrath 
Heuschrecke, had it in his power to furnish the requisite 
Documents. 



EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES 9 

As in some chemical mixture, that has stood long 
evaporating, but would not crystallize, instantly when 
the wire or other fixed substance is introduced, crystalli- 
zation commences, and rapidly proceeds till the whole 
is finished, so was it with the Editor's mind and this 
offer of Heuschrecke's. Form rose out of void solution 
and discontinuity; like united itself with like in definite 
arrangement: and soon either in actual vision and pos- 
session, or in fixed reasonable hope, the image of the 
whole Enterprise had shaped itself, so to speak, into a 
solid mass. Cautiously yet courageously, through the 
twopenny post, application to the famed redoubtable 
Oliver Yorke was now made: an interview, interviews 
with that singular man have taken place; with more 
of assurance on our side, with less of satire (at least 
of open satire) on his, than we anticipated; — for the 
rest, with such issue as is now visible. As to those 
same ' patriotic Libraries/ the Hofrath's counsel could 
only be viewed with silent amazement ; but with his offer 
of Documents we joyfully and almost instantaneously 
closed. Thus, too, in the sure expectation of these, we 
already see our task begun; and this our Sartor Re- 
sartus, which is properly a ' Life and Opinions of Herr 
Teufelsdrockh/ hourly advancing. 

Of our fitness for the Enterprise, to which we have 
such title and vocation, it were perhaps uninteresting 
to say more. Let the British reader study and enjoy, 
in simplicity of heart, what is here presented him, and 
with whatever metaphysical acumen and talent for medi- 
tation he is possessed of. Let him strive to keep a 
free, open sense; cleared from the mists of prejudice, 
above all from the paralysis of cant; and directed rather 
to the Book itself than to the Editor of the Book. Who 
or what such Editor may be, must remain conjectural, 



10 SARTOR RESARTUS 

and even insignificant : 1 it is a voice publishing tidings 
of the Philosophy of Clothes; undoubtedly a Spirit ad- 
dressing Spirits : whoso hath ears, let him hear. 

On one other point the Editor thinks it needful to 
give warning: namely, that he is animated with a true 
though perhaps a feeble attachment to the Institutions 
of our Ancestors; and minded to defend these, accord- 
ing to ability, at all hazards ; nay, it was partly with a 
view to such defense that he engaged in this undertak- 
ing. To stem, or if that be impossible, profitably to 
divert the current of Innovation, such a Volume as 
Teufelsdrockh's, if cunningly planted down, were no 
despicable pile, or floodgate, in the logical wear. 

For the rest, be it nowise apprehended, that any 
personal connection of ours with Teufelsdrockh, Heusch- 
recke, or this Philosophy of Clothes, can pervert our 
judgment, or sway us to extenuate or exaggerate. Pow- 
erless, we venture to promise, are those private Compli- 
ments themselves. Grateful they may well be; as 
generous illusions of friendship; as fair mementos of 
bygone unions, of those nights and suppers of the gods, 
when, lapped in the symphonies and harmonies of Philo- 
sophic Eloquence, though with baser accompaniments, 
the present Editor revelled in that feast of reason, 
never since vouchsafed him in so full measure! But 
what then? Amicus Plato, magis arnica Veritas; Teu- 
felsdrockh is our friend, Truth is our divinity. In our 
historical and critical capacity, we hope we are strangers 
to all the world; have feud or favor with no one, — save 
indeed the Devil, with whom, as with the Prince of Lies 
and Darkness, we do at all times wage internecine war. 
This assurance, at an epoch when puffery and quackery 

1 With us even he still communicates in some sort of mask, 
or muffler; and, we have reason to think, under a feigned 
name!—- O. Y. 



REMINISCENCES 11 

have reached a height unexampled in the annals of man- 
kind, and even English Editors, like Chinese Shopkeep- 
ers, must write on their door-lintels No cheating here, — 
we thought it good to premise. 



CHAPTER III 

REMINISCENCES 

To the Author's private circle the appearance of this 
singular Work on Clothes must have occasioned little less 
surprise than it has to the rest of the world. For our- 
selves, at least, few things have been more unexpected. 
Professor Teufelsdrockh, at the period of our acquaint- 
ance with him, seemed to lead a quite still and self- 
contained life : a man devoted to the higher Philosophies, 
indeed ; yet more likely, if he published at all, to publish 
a refutation of Hegel and Bardili, both of whom, 
strangely enough, he included under a common ban; 
than to descend, as he has here done, into the angry 
noisy Forum, with an Argument that cannot but exasper- 
ate and divide. Not, that we can remember, was the 
Philosophy of Clothes once touched upon between us. 
If through the high, silent, meditative Transcendental- 
ism of our Friend we detected any practical tendency 
whatever, it was at most Political, and towards a certain 
prospective, and for the present quite speculative, Radi- 
calism; as indeed some correspondence, on his part, with 
Herr Oken of Jena was now and then suspected; though 
his special contributions to the Isis could never be more 
than surmised at. But, at all events, nothing Moral, 
still less anything Didactico-Religious, was looked for 
from him. 



12 SARTOR RESARTUS 

Well do we recollect the last words he spoke in our 
hearing; which indeed, with the Night they were uttered 
in, are to be forever remembered. Lifting his huge 
tumbler of Gukguk, 1 and for a moment lowering his 
tobacco-pipe, he stood up in full Coffee-house (it was 
Zur Grilnen Gans, the largest in Weissnichtwo, where 
all the Virtuosity, and nearly all the Intellect of the 
place assembled of an evening) ; and there, with low, 
soul-stirring tone, and the look truly of an angel, though 
whether of a white or of a black one might be dubious, 
proposed this toast: Die Sache der Armen in Gottes und 
Teufels Namen (The Cause of the Poor, in Heaven's 

name and , s) ! One full shout, breaking the leaden 

silence; then a gurgle of innumerable emptying bump- 
ers, again followed by universal cheering, returned him 
loud acclaim. It was the finale of the night: resuming 
their pipes; in the highest enthusiasm, amid volumes of 
tobacco-smoke; triumphant, cloud-capt without and 
within, the assembly broke up, each to his thoughtful 
pillow. Bleibt dock ein echter Spass- und Galgen-vogel, 
said several; meaning thereby that, one day, he would 
probably be hanged for his democratic sentiments. Wo 
stecJct dock der S chalk? added they, looking round: but 
Teufelsdrockh had retired by private alleys, and the 
Compiler of these pages beheld him no more. 

In such scenes has it been our lot to live with this 
Philosopher, such estimate to form of his purposes and 
powers. And yet, thou brave Teufelsdrockh, who could 
tell what lurked in thee? Under those thick locks of 
thine, so long and lank, overlapping roof-wise the grav- 
est face we ever in this world saw, there dwelt a most 
busy brain. In thy eyes too, deep under their shaggy 
brows, and looking out so still and dreamy, have we not 
noticed gleams of an ethereal or else a diabolic fire, 
a Gukguk is unhappily only an academical — beer. 



EEMINISCENCES 13 

and half-fancied that their stillness was but the rest 
of infinite motion, the sleep of a spinning-top? Thy 
little figure, there as, in loose ill-brushed threadbare 
habiliments, thou s attest, amid litter and lumber, whole 
days, to ' think and smoke tobacco,' held in it a mighty 
heart. The secrets of man's Life were laid open to thee; 
thou sawest into the mystery of the Universe, farther 
than another; thou hadst in petto thy remarkable Vol- 
ume on Clothes. Nay, was there not in that clear 
logically-founded Transcendentalism of thine ; still more, 
in thy meek, silent, deep-seated Sansculottism, combined 
with a true princely Courtesy of inward nature, the vis- 
ible rudiments of such speculation? But great men are 
too often unknown, or what is worse, misknown. Al- 
ready, when we dreamed not of it, the warp of thy 
remarkable Volume lay on the loom; and silently, mys- 
terious shuttles were putting-in the woof ! 

How the Hofrath Heuschrecke is to furnish biographi- 
cal data, in this case, may be a curious question; the 
answer of which, however, is happily not our concern, 
but his. To us it appeared, after repeated trial, that 
in Weissnichtwo, from the archives or memories of the 
best-informed classes, no Biography of Teufelsdrockh 
was to be gathered; not so much as a false one. He 
was a stranger there, wafted thither by what is called 
the course of circumstances; concerning whose parent- 
age, birthplace, prospects, or pursuits, curiosity had in- 
deed made inquiries, but satisfied herself with the most 
indistinct replies. For himself, he was a man so still 
and altogether unparticipating, that to question him even 
afar off on such particulars was a thing of more than 
usual delicacy: besides, in his sly way, he had ever some 
quaint turn, not without its satirical edge, wherewith 
to divert such intrusions, and deter you from the like. 



14 SARTOR RESARTUS 

Wits spoke of him secretly as if he were a kind of 
Melchizedek, without father or mother of any kind; 
sometimes, with reference to his great historic and sta- 
tistic knowledge, and the vivid way he had of expressing 
himself like an eye-witness of distant transactions and 
scenes, they called him the Ewige Jude, Everlasting, or 
as we say, Wandering Jew. 

To the most, indeed, he had become not so much a 
Man as a Thing; which Thing doubtless they were ac- 
customed to see, and with satisfaction; but no more 
thought of accounting for than for the fabrication of 
their daily Allgemeine Zeitung, or the domestic habits 
of the Sun. Both were there and welcome; the world 
enjoyed what good was in them, and thought no more 
of the matter. The man Teufelsdrockh passed and re- 
passed, in his little circle, as one of those originals and 
nondescripts, more frequent in German Universities than 
elsewhere ; of whom, though you see them alive, and feel 
certain enough that they must have a History, no His- 
tory seems to be discoverable; or only such as men give 
of mountain rocks and antediluvian ruins: That they 
have been created by unknown agencies, are in a state of 
gradual decay, and for the present reflect light and 
resist pressure; that is, are visible and tangible objects 
in this phantasm world, where so much other mystery is. 

It was to be remarked that though, by title and 
diploma, Professor der Allerley-Wissenschaft, or as we 
should say in English, ' Professor of Things in Gen- 
eral/ he had never delivered any Course; perhaps never 
been incited thereto by any public furtherance or requi- 
sition. To all appearance, the enlightened Government 
of Weissnichtwo, in founding their New University, 
imagined they had done enough, if * in times like ours,' 
as the half-official Program expressed it, ' when all things 
are, rapidly or slowly, resolving themselves into Chaos, 



REMINISCENCES 15 

a Professorship of this kind had been established; 
whereby, as occasion called, the task of bodying some- 
what forth again from such Chaos might be, even 
slightly, facilitated.' That actual Lectures should be 
held, and Public Classes for the ' Science of Things in 
General,' they doubtless considered premature; on which 
ground too they had only established the Professorship, 
nowise endowed it ; so that Teuf elsdrockh, ' recommended 
by the highest Names,' had been promoted thereby to 
a Name merely. 

Great, among the more enlightened classes, was the 
admiration of this new Professorship: how an enlight- 
ened Government had seen into the Want of the Age 
(Zeitbediirfniss) ; how at length, instead of Denial and 
Destruction, we were to have a science of Affirmation 
and Reconstruction; and Germany and Weissnichtwo 
were where they should be, in the vanguard of the world. 
Considerable also was the wonder at the new Professor, 
dropped opportunely enough into the nascent Univer- 
sity; so able to lecture, should occasion call; so ready 
to hold his peace for indefinite periods, should an en- 
lightened Government consider that occasion did not call. 
But such admiration and such wonder, being followed 
by no act to keep them living, could last only nine days ; 
and, long before our visit to that scene, had quite died 
away. The more cunning heads thought it was all an 
expiring clutch at popularity, on the part of a Minister, 
whom domestic embarrassments, court intrigues, old age, 
and dropsy soon afterwards finally drove from the 
helm. 

As for Teufelsdrockh, except by his nightly appear- 
ances at the Griine Gans, Weissnichtwo saw little of him, 
felt little of him. Here, over his tumbler of Gukguk, 
he sat reading J ournals ; sometimes contemplatively look- 
ing into the clouds of his tobacco-pipe, without other 



16 SARTOR RESARTUS 

visible employment: always, from his mild ways, an 
agreeable phenomenon there; more especially when he 
opened his lips for speech; on which occasions the whole 
Coffee-house would hush itself into silence, as if sure 
to hear something noteworthy. Nay, perhaps to hear a 
whole series and river of the most memorable utterances ; 
such as, when once thawed, he would for hours indulge 
in, with fit audience : and the more memorable, as issuing 
from a head apparently not more interested in them, not 
more conscious of them, than is the sculptured stone 
head of some public fountain, which through its brass 
mouth-tube emits water to the worthy and the unworthy; 
careless whether it be for cooking victuals or quenching 
conflagrations; indeed, maintains the same earnest as- 
siduous look, whether any water be flowing or not. 

To the Editor of these sheets, as to a young enthusi- 
astic Englishman, however unworthy, Teufelsdrockh 
opened himself perhaps more than to the most. Pity 
only that we could not then half guess his importance, 
and scrutinize him with due power of vision! We en- 
joyed, what not three men in Weissnichtwo could boast 
of, a certain degree of access to the Professor's private 
domicile. It was the attic floor of the highest house in 
the Wahngasse; and might truly be called the pinnacle 
of Weissnichtwo, for it rose sheer up above the con- 
tiguous roofs, themselves rising from elevated ground. 
Moreover, with its windows it looked towards all the 
four Orte, or as the Scotch say, and we ought to say, 
Airts: the sitting-room itself commanded three; another 
came to view in the Schlafgemach (bed-room) at the 
opposite end ; to say nothing of the kitchen, which offered 
two, as it were, duplicates, and showing nothing new. 
So that it was in fact the speculum or watch-tower of 
Teufelsdrockh; wherefrom, sitting at ease, he might 
see the whole life-circulation of that considerable City; 



REMINISCENCES 17 

the streets and lanes of which, with all their doing and 
driving (Thun und Treiben), were for the most part 
visible there. 

' I look down into all that wasp-nest or bee-hive,' have 
we heard him say, ' and witness their wax-laying and 
honey-making, and poison-brewing, and choking by sul- 
phur. From the Palace esplanade, where music plays 
while Serene Highness is pleased to eat his victuals, 
down to the low lane, where in her door-sill the aged 
widow, knitting for a thin livelihood, sits to feel the 
afternoon sun, I see it all; for, except the Schlosskirche 
weathercock, no biped stands so high. Couriers arrive 
bestrapped and bebooted, bearing Joy and Sorrow 
bagged-up in pouches of leather; there, topladen, and 
with four swift horses, rolls-in the country Baron and 
his household; here, on timber-leg, the lamed Soldier 
hops painfully along, begging alms: a thousand car- 
riages, and wains, and cars, come tumbling-in with 
Food, with young Rusticity, and other Raw Produce, 
inanimate or animate, and go tumbling out again with 
Produce manufactured. That living flood, pouring 
through these streets, of all qualities and ages, knowest 
thou whence it is coming, whither it is going? Aus der 
Ewigkeit, zu der EwigJceit hin : From Eternity, onwards 
to Eternity! These are Apparitions: what else? Are 
they not Souls rendered visible: in Bodies, that took 
shape and will lose it, melting into air? Their solid 
Pavement is a Picture of the Sense; they walk on the 
bosom of Nothing, blank Time is behind them and be- 
fore them. Or fanciest thou, the red and yellow Clothes- 
screen yonder, with spurs on its heels and feather in its 
crown, is but of To-day, without a Yesterday or a To- 
morrow; and had not rather its Ancestor alive when 
Hengst and Horsa overran thy Island? Friend, thou 
seest here a living link in that Tissue of History, which 



18 SARTOR RESARTUS 

inweaves all Being: watch well, or it will be past thee, 
and seen no more. 

f Ach, mein Lieber! ' said he once, at midnight, when 
we had returned from the Coffee-house in rather earnest 
talk, ' it is a true sublimity to dwell here. These fringes 
of lamplight, struggling up through smoke and thousand- 
fold exhalation, some fathoms into the ancient reign of 
Night, what thinks Bootes of them, as he leads his Hunt- 
ing-dogs over the Zenith in their leash of sidereal fire? 
That stifled hum of Midnight, when Traffic has lain 
down to rest ; and the chariot-wheels of Vanity, still roll- 
ing here and there through distant streets, are bearing 
her to Halls roofed-in, and lighted to the due pitch for 
her ; and only Vice and Misery, to prowl or to moan like 
nightbirds, are abroad: that hum, I say, like the ster- 
torous, unquiet slumber of sick Life, is heard in Heaven ! 
Oh, under that hideous coverlet of vapors, and putre- 
factions, and unimaginable gases, what a Fermenting- vat 
lies simmering and hid! The joyful and the sorrowful 
are there; men are dying there, men are being born; 
men are praying, — on the other side of a brick partition, 
men are cursing; and around them all is the vast, void 
Night. The proud Grandee still lingers in his perfumed 
saloons, or reposes within damask curtains; Wretched- 
ness cowers into truckle-beds, or shivers hunger-stricken 
into its lair of straw: in obscure cellars, Rouge-et-Noir 
languidly emits its voice-of-destiny to haggard hungry 
Villains; while Councilors of State sit plotting, and 
playing their high chess-game, whereof the pawns are 
Men. The Lover whispers his mistress that the coach 
is ready; and she, full of hope and fear, glides down, to 
fly with him over the borders: the Thief, still more si- 
lently, sets-to his picklocks and crowbars, or lurks in 
wait till the watchmen first snore in their boxes. Gay 
mansions, with supper-rooms, and dancing-rooms, are 



REMINISCENCES 19 

full of light and music and high-swelling hearts; but, 
in the Condemned Cells, the pulse of life beats tremulous 
and faint, and bloodshot eyes look out through the dark- 
ness, which is around and within, for the light of a stern 
last morning. Six men are to be hanged on the mor- 
row: comes no hammering from the Rabenstein? — their 
gallows must even now be o' building. Upwards of 
five-hundred-thousand two-legged animals without feath- 
ers lie round us, in horizontal positions ; their heads all 
in nightcaps, and full of the foolishest dreams. Riot 
cries aloud, and staggers and swaggers in his rank dens 
of shame; and the Mother, with streaming hair, kneels 
over her pallid dying infant, whose cracked lips only 
her tears now moisten. — All these heaped and huddled 
together, with nothing but a little carpentry and masonry 
between them; — crammed in, like salted fish in their 
barrel;— or weltering, shall I say, like an Egyptian 
pitcher of tamed vipers, each struggling to get its head 
above the others: such work goes on under that smoke- 
counterpane! — But I, meir Werther, sit above it all; I 
am alone with the Stars/ 

We looked in his face to see whether, in the utterance 
of such extraordinary Night-thoughts, no feeling might 
be traced there; but with the light we had, which indeed 
was only a single tallow-light, and far enough from the 
window, nothing save that old calmness and fixedness 

was visible. 

These were the Professor's talking seasons : most com- 
monly he spoke in mere monosyllables, or sat altogether 
silent and smoked; while the visitor had liberty either 
to say what he listed, receiving for answer an occa- 
sional grunt; or to look round for a space, and then 
take himself away. It was a strange apartment; full of 
books and tattered papers, and miscellaneous shreds 
of all conceivable substances, ' united in a common ele- 



20 SARTOR RESARTUS 

ment of dust.' Books lay on tables, and below tables; 
here fluttered a sheet of manuscript, there a torn hand- 
kerchief, or nightcap hastily thrown aside; ink-bottles 
alternated with bread-crusts, coffee-pots, tobacco-boxes, 
Periodical Literature, and Bliicher Boots. Old Lieschen 
(Lisekin, 'Liza), who was his bed-maker and stove- 
lighter, his washer and wringer, cook, errand-maid, and 
general lion's provider, and for the rest a very orderly 
creature, had no sovereign authority in this last citadel 
of Teuf elsdrockh ; only some once in the month she half- 
forcibly made her way thither, with broom and duster, 
and (Teuf elsdrockh hastily saving his manuscripts) ef- 
fected a partial clearance, a jail-delivery of such lum- 
ber as was not Literary. These were her Erdbeben 
(earthquakes), which Teuf elsdrockh dreaded worse than 
the pestilence; nevertheless, to such length he had been 
forced to comply. Glad would he have been to sit here 
philosophizing forever, or till the litter, by accumulation, 
drove him out of doors: but Lieschen was his right-arm, 
and spoon, and necessary of life, and would not be 
flatly gainsayed. We can still remember the ancient 
woman; so silent that some thought her dumb; deaf 
also you would often have supposed her; for Teuf els- 
drockh, and Teufelsdrockh only, would she serve or 
give heed to; and with him she seemed to communicate 
chiefly by signs; if it were not rather by some secret 
divination that she guessed all his wants, and supplied 
them. Assiduous old dame ! she scoured, and sorted, 
and swept, in her kitchen, with the least possible violence 
to the ear; yet all was tight and right there: hot and 
black came the coffee ever at the due moment; and the 
speechless Lieschen herself looked out on you, from 
under her clean white coif with its lappets, through her 
clean withered face and wrinkles, with a look of help- 
ful intelligence, almost of benevolence. 



REMINISCENCES 21 

Few strangers, as above hinted, had admittance hither : 
the only one we ever saw there, ourselves excepted, was 
the Hofrath Heuschrecke, already known, by name and 
expectation, to the readers of these pages. To us, at 
that period, Herr Heuschrecke seemed one of those 
purse-mouthed, crane-necked, clean-brushed, pacific in- 
dividuals, perhaps sufficiently distinguished in society by 
this fact, that, in dry weather or in wet, ' they never 
appear without their umbrella/ Had we not known 
with what ' little wisdom ' the world is governed ; and 
how, in Germany as elsewhere, the ninety-and-nine Pub- 
lic Men can for most part be but mute train-bearers to 
the hundredth, perhaps but stalking-horses and willing 
or unwilling dupes, — it might have seemed wonderful 
how Herr Heuschrecke should be named a Rath, or 
Councilor, and Counselor, even in Weissnichtwo. What 
counsel to any man, or to any woman, could this particu- 
y'lar Hofrath give; in whose loose, zigzag figure; in whose 
thin visage, as it went jerking to and fro, in minute in- 
cessant fluctuation, — you traced rather confusion worse 
confounded; at most, Timidity and physical Cold? 
Some indeed said withal, he was ' the very Spirit of 
Love embodied ' : blue earnest eyes, full of sadness and 
kindness; purse ever open, and so forth; the whole of 
which, we shall now hope, for many reasons, was not 
quite groundless. Nevertheless friend Teufelsdrockh's 
outline, who indeed handled the burin like few in these 
cases, was probably the best: Er hat Gemiith und Geist, 
hat wenigstens gehabt, doch ohne Organ, ohne Schicksals- 
Gunst; ist gegenwartig aber halb-zerriittet, halb-erstarrt, 
' He has heart and talent, at least has had such, yet 
without fit mode of utterance, or favor of Fortune; and 
so is now half -cracked, half -congealed.' — What the Hof- 
rath shall think of this when he sees it, readers may 



22 SARTOR RESARTUS 

wonder : we, safe in the stronghold of Historical Fidelity, 
are careless. 

The main point, doubtless, for us all, is his love of 
Teufelsdrockh, which indeed was also by far the most 
decisive feature of Heuschrecke himself. We are en- 
abled to assert that he hung on the Professor with the 
fondness of a Boswell for his Johnson. And perhaps 
with the like return ; for Teufelsdrockh treated his gaunt 
admirer with little outward regard, as some half-rational 
or altogether irrational friend, and at best loved him out 
of gratitude and by habit. On the other hand, it was 
curious to observe with what reverent kindness, and a 
sort of fatherly protection, our Hofrath, being the elder, 
richer, and as he fondly imagined far more practically 
influential of the two, looked and tended on his little 
Sage, whom he seemed to consider as a living oracle. 
Let but Teufelsdrockh open his mouth, Heuschrecke's 
also unpuckered itself into a free doorway, besides his 
being all eye and all ear, so that nothing might be lost: 
and then, at every pause in the harangue, he gurgled-out 
his pursy chuckle of a cough-laugh (for the machinery 
of laughter took some time to get in motion, and seemed 
crank and slack), or else his twanging nasal, Bravo! 
Das glaub' ich; in either case, by way of heartiest ap- 
proval. In short, if Teufelsdrockh was Dalai-Lama, of 
which, except perhaps in his self-seclusion, and godlike 
indifference, there was no symptom, then might Heusch* 
recke pass for his chief Talapoin, to whom no dough* 
pill he could knead and publish was other than medicinal 
and sacred. 

In such environment, social, domestic, physical, did 
Teufelsdrockh, at the time of our acquaintance, and most 
likely does he still, live and meditate. Here, perched-up 
in his high Wahngasse watch-tower, and often, in soli- 
tude, outwatching the Bear, it was that the indomitable 



CHARACTERISTICS 23 

Inquirer fought all his battles with Dulness and Dark- 
ness ; here, in all probability, that he wrote this surpris- 
ing Volume on Clothes. Additional particulars: of his 
age, which was of that standing middle sort you could 
only guess at; of his wide surtout; the color of his 
trousers, fashion of his broad-brimmed steeple-hat, and 
so forth, we might report, but do not. The Wisest truly 
is, in these times, the Greatest; so that an enlightened 
curiosity, leaving Kings and suchlike to rest very much 
on their own basis, turns more and more to the Philo- 
sophic Class: nevertheless, what reader expects that, 
with all our writing and reporting, Teufelsdrockh could 
be brought home to him, till once the Documents arrive? 
His Life, Fortunes, and Bodily Presence, are as yet 
hidden from us, or matter only of faint conjecture. 
But, on the other hand, does not his Soul lie enclosed in 
this remarkable Volume, much more truly than Pedro 
Garcia's did in the buried Bag of Doubloons? To the 
soul of Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, to his opinions, namely, 
on the ' Origin and Influence of Clothes/ we for the 
present gladly return. 



CHAPTER IV 

CHARACTERISTICS 

It were a piece of vain flattery to pretend that this 
Work on Clothes entirely contents us; that it is not, 
like all works of genius, like the very Sun, which, though 
the highest published creation, or work of genius, has 
nevertheless black spots and troubled nebulosities amid 
its effulgence, — a mixture of insight, inspiration, with 
dulness, double-vision, and even utter blindness. 

Without committing ourselves to those enthusiastic 



24 SARTOR RESARTUS 

praises and prophesyings of the Weissnichtwo'sche An- 
zeiger, we admitted that the Book had in a high degree 
excited us to self-activity, which is the best effect of 
any book; that it had even operated changes in our way 
of thought; nay, that it promised to prove, as it were, 
the opening of a new mine-shaft, wherein the whole 
world of Speculation might henceforth dig to unknown 
depths. More especially it may now be declared that 
Professor Teufelsdrockh's acquirements, patience of re- 
search, philosophic and even poetic vigor, are here made 
indisputably manifest; and unhappily no less his prolix- 
ity and tortuosity and manifold ineptitude; that, on the 
whole, as in opening new mine-shafts is not unreason- 
able, there is much rubbish in his Book, though likewise 
specimens of almost invaluable ore. A paramount popu- 
larity in England we cannot promise him. Apart from 
the choice of such a topic as Clothes, too often the 
manner of treating it betokens in the Author a rusticity 
and academic seclusion, unblamable, indeed inevitable 
in a German, but fatal to his success with our public. 

Of good society Teufelsdrockh appears to have seen 
little, or has mostly forgotten what he saw. He speaks- 
out with a strange plainness; calls many things by their 
mere dictionary names. To him the Upholsterer is no 
Pontiff, neither is any Drawing-room a Temple, were it 
never so begilt and overhung: ' a whole immensity of 
Brussels carpets, and pier-glasses, and or-molu,' as he 
himself expresses it, ' cannot hide from me that such 
Drawing-room is simply a section of Infinite Space, 
where so many God-created Souls do for the time meet 
together/ To Teufelsdrockh the highest Duchess is 
respectable, is venerable ; but nowise for her pearl brace- 
lets and Malines laces: in his eyes, the star of a Lord 
is little less and little more than the broad button of 
Birmingham spelter in a Clown's smock ; ' each is an 






CHARACTERISTICS 25 

implement/ he says, 'in its kind; a tag for hooking- 
together; and, for the rest, was dug from the earth, and 
hammered bn a stithy before smith's fingers/ Thus does 
the Professor look in men's faces with a strange impar- 
tiality, a strange scientific freedom ; like a man unversed 
in the higher circles, like a man dropped thither from 
the Moon. Rightly considered, it is in this peculiarity, 
running through his whole system of thought, that all 
these shortcomings, over-shootings, and multiform per- 
versities, take rise: if indeed they have not a second 
source, also natural enough, in his Transcendental 
Philosophies, and humor of looking at all Matter and 
Material things as Spirit; whereby truly his case were 
but the more hopeless, the more lamentable. 

To the Thinkers of this nation, however, of which 
class it is firmly believed there are individuals yet ex- 
tant, we can safely recommend the Work: nay, who 
knows but among the fashionable ranks too, if it be 
true, as Teufelsdrockh maintains, that ' within the most 
starched cravat there passes a windpipe and weasand, 
and under the thickliest embroidered waistcoat beats a 
heart,' — the force of that rapt earnestness may be felt, 
and here and there an arrow of the soul pierce through ? 
In our wild Seer, shaggy, unkempt, like a Baptist liv- 
ing on locusts and wild honey, there is an untutored 
energy, a silent, as it were unconscious, strength, which 
except in the higher walks of Literature, must be rare. 
Many a deep glance, and often with unspeakable pre- 
cision, has he cast into mysterious Nature, and the still 
more mysterious Life of Man. Wonderful it is with 
what cutting words, now and then, I e severs asunder the 
confusion; shears down, were it furlongs deep, into the 
true center of the matter; and there not only hits the 
nail on the head, but with crushing force smites it home, 
and buries it. — On the other hand, let us be free to ad- 



26 SARTOR RESARTUS 

mit, he is the most unequal writer breathing. Often 
after some such feat, he will play truant for long pages, 
and go dawdling and dreaming, and mumbling and 
maundering the merest commonplaces, as if he were 
asleep with eyes open, which indeed he is. 

Of his boundless Learning, and how all reading and 
literature in most known tongues, from Sanchoniathon to 
Dr Lingard, from your Oriental Shasters, and Talrnuds, 
and Korans, with Cassini's Siamese Tables, and La- 
place's Mecanique Celeste, down to Robinson Crusoe and 
the Belfast Town and Country Almanack, are familiar 
to him, — we shall say nothing: for unexampled as it is 
with us, to the Germans such universality of study passes 
without wonder, as a thing commendable, indeed, but 
natural, indispensable, and there of course. A man that 
devotes his life to learning, shall he not be learned? 

In respect of style our Author manifests the same 
genial capability, marred too often by the same rude- 
ness, inequality, and apparent want of intercourse with 
the higher classes. Occasionally, as above hinted, we 
find consummate vigor, a true inspiration; his burning 
thoughts step forth in fit burning words, like so many 
full-formed Minervas, issuing amid flame and splendor 
from Jove's head; a rich, idiomatic diction, picturesque 
allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint tricksy turns; 
all the graces and terrors of a wild Imagination, wedded 
to the clearest Intellect, alternate in beautiful vicissi- 
tude. Were it not that sheer sleeping and soporific 
passages; circumlocutions, repetitions, touches even of 
pure doting j argon, so often intervene ! On the whole, 
Professor Teufelsdrockh is not a cultivated writer. Of 
his sentences perhaps not more than nine-tenths stand 
straight on their legs; the remainder are in quite angu- 
lar attitudes, buttressed-up by props (of parentheses 
and dashes), and ever with this or the other tagrag 



CHARACTERISTICS 27 

hanging from them; a few even sprawl-out helplessly on 
all sides, quite broken-backed and dismembered. Never- 
theless, in almost his very worst moods, there lies in 
him a singular attraction. A wild tone pervades the 
whole utterance of the man, like its keynote and regu- 
lator; now screwing itself aloft as into the Song of 
Spirits, or else the shrill mockery of Fiends; now sink- 
ing in cadences, not without melodious heartiness, though 
sometimes abrupt enough, into the common pitch, when 
we hear it only as a monotonous hum; of which hum the 
true character is extremely difficult to fix. _ Up to this 
hour we have never fully satisfied ourselves whether it 
is a tone and hum of real Humor, which we reckon 
among the very highest qualities of genius, or some 
echo of mere Insanity and Inanity, which doubtless 
ranks below the very lowest. 

Under a like difficulty, in spite even of our personal 
intercourse, do we still lie with regard to the Professor's 
moral feeling. Gleams of an ethereal love burst forth 
from him, soft wailings of infinite pity; he could clasp 
the whole Universe into his bosom, and keep it warm; it 
seems as if under that rude exterior there dwelt a very 
seraph. Then again he is so sly and still, so imper- 
turbably saturnine ; shows such indifference, malign cool- 
ness towards all that men strive after; and ever with 
some half-visible wrinkle of a bitter sardonic humor, 
if indeed it be not mere stolid callousness, — that you 
look on him almost with a shudder, as on some incarnate 
Mephistopheles, to whom this great terrestrial and 
celestial Round, after all, were but some huge foolish 
Whirligig, where kings and beggars, and angels and 
demons, and stars and street-sweepings, were chaotically 
whirled, in which only children could take interest. His 
look, as we mentioned, is probably the gravest ever seen : 
yet it is not of that cast-iron gravity frequent enough 



28 SARTOR RESARTUS 

among our own Chancery suitors; but rather the gravity 
as of some silent, high-encircled mountain-pool, perhaps 
the crater of an extinct volcano; into whose black deeps 
you fear to gaze: those eyes, those lights that sparkle 
in it, may indeed be reflexes of the heavenly Stars, but 
perhaps also glances from the region of Nether Fire ! 

Certainly a mOst involved, self-secluded, altogether 
enigmatic nature, this of Teuf elsdrockh ! Here, how- 
ever, we gladly recall to mind that once we saw him 
laugh; once only, perhaps it was the first and last time 
in his life; but then such a peal of laughter, enough to 
have awakened the Seven Sleepers ! It was of Jean 
Paul's doing: some single billow in that vast World- 
Mahlstrom of Humor, with its heaven-kissing corusca- 
tions, which is now, alas, all congealed in the frost of 
death ! The large-bodied Poet and the small, both large 
enough in soul, sat talking miscellaneously together, the 
present Editor being privileged to listen; and now Paul, 
in his serious way, was giving one of those inimitable 
' Extra-harangues ' ; and, as it chanced, On the Proposal 
for a Cast-metal King: gradually a light kindled in our 
Professor's eyes and face, a beaming, mantling, loveliest 
light; through those murky features, a radiant, ever- 
young Apollo looked ; and he burst forth like the neighing 
of all Tattersall's, — tears streaming down his cheeks, 
pipe held aloft, foot clutched into the air, — loud, long- 
continuing, uncontrollable; a laugh not of the face and 
diaphragm only, but of the whole man from head to 
heel. The present Editor, who laughed indeed, yet with 
measure, began to fear all was not right: however, 
Teufelsdrockh composed himself, and sank into his old 
stillness; on his inscrutable countenance there was, if 
anything, a slight look of shame; and Richter himself 
could not rouse him again. Readers who have any tinc- 
ture of Psychology know how much is to be inferred 



CHARACTERISTICS 29 

from this; and that no man who has once heartily and 
wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad. 
How much lies in Laughter: the cipher-key, wherewith 
we decipher the whole man ! Some men wear an ever- 
lasting barren simper; in the smile of others lies a cold 
glitter as of ice: the fewest are able to laugh, what can 
be called laughing, but only sniff and titter and snigger 
from the throat outwards; or at best, produce some 
whiffling husky cachinnation, as if they were laughing 
through wool: of none such comes good. The man who 
cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems, and 
spoils; but his whole life is already a treason and a 
stratagem. 

Considered as an Author, Herr Teufelsdrockh has 
one scarcely pardonable fault, doubtless his worst: an 
almost total want of arrangement. In this remarkable 
Volume, it is true, his adherence to the mere course of 
Time produces, through the Narrative portions, a cer- 
tain show of outward method; but of true logical method 
and sequence there is too little. Apart from its multi- 
farious sections and subdivisions, the Work naturally 
falls into two Parts; a Historical-Descriptive, and a 
Philosophical-Speculative: but falls, unhappily, by no 
firm line of demarcation; in that labyrinthic combina- 
tion, each Part overlaps, and indents, and indeed runs 
quite through the other. Many sections are of a de- 
batable rubric, or even quite nondescript and unname- 
able; whereby the Book not only loses in accessibility, 
but too often distresses us like some mad banquet, 
wherein all courses had been confounded, and fish and 
flesh, soup and solid, oyster-sauce, lettuces, Rhine-wine 
and French mustard, were hurled into one huge tureen or 
trough, and the hungry Public invited to help itself. 
To bring what order we can out of this Chaos shall be 
part of our endeavor. 



SO SARTOR RESARTUS 

CHAPTER V 

THE WORLD IN CLOTHES 

' As Montesquieu wrote a Spirit of Laws/ observes 
our Professor, 'so could I write a Spirit of Clothes; 
thus, with an Esprit des Lois, properly an Esprit de 
Coutumes, we should have an Esprit de Costumes. For 
neither in tailoring nor in legislating does man proceed 
by mere Accident, but the hand is ever guided on by 
mysterious operations of the mind. In all his Modes, 
and habilatory endeavors, an Architectural Idea will 
be found lurking; his Body and the Cloth are the site 
and materials whereon and whereby his beautified edi- 
fice, of a Person, is to be built. Whether he flow grace- 
fully out in folded mantles, based on light sandals; 
tower-up in high headgear, from amid peaks, spangles 
and bell-girdles; swell-out in starched ruffs, buckram 
stuffings, and monstrous tuberosities; or girth himself 
into separate sections, and front the world an Agglom- 
eration of four limbs, — will depend on the nature of 
such Architectural Idea : whether Grecian, Gothic, Later- 
Gothic, or altogether Modern, and Parisian or Anglo- 
Dandiacal. Again, what meaning lies in Color! From 
the soberest drab to the high-flaming scarlet, spiritual 
idiosyncrasies unfold themselves in choice of Color: if 
the Cut betoken Intellect and Talent, so does the Color 
betoken Temper and Heart. In all which, among na- 
tions as among individuals, there is an incessant, in- 
dubitable, though infinitely complex working of Cause 
and Effect: every snip of the Scissors has been regulated 
and prescribed by ever-active Influences, which doubt- 
less to Intelligences of a superior order are neither in- 
visible nor illegible. 



THE WORLD IN CLOTHES SI 

f For such superior Intelligences a Cause-and-Effect 
Philosophy of Clothes, as of Laws, were probably a 
comfortable winter-evening entertainment: nevertheless, 
for inferior Intelligences, like men, such Philosophies 
have always seemed to me uninstructive enough. Nay, 
what is your Montesquieu himself but a clever infant 
spelling Letters from a hieroglyphical prophetic Book, 
the lexicon of which lies in Eternity, in Heaven? — Let 
any Cause-and-Effect Philosopher explain, not why I 
wear such and such a Garment, obey such end such a 
Law; but even why I am here, to wear and obey any- 
thing! — Much, therefore, if not the whole, of that same 
Spirit of Clothes I shall suppress, as hypothetical, in- 
effectual, and even impertinent: naked Facts, and De- 
ductions drawn therefrom in quite another than that 
omniscient style, are my humbler and proper province.' 

Acting on which prudent restriction, Teufelsdrockh 
has nevertheless contrived to take-in a well-nigh bound- 
less extent of field; at least, the boundaries too often 
lie quite beyond our horizon. Selection being indis- 
pensable, we shall here glance-over his First Part only 
in the most cursory manner. 

This First Part is, no doubt, distinguished by omniv- 
orous learning, and utmost patience and fairness: at the 
same time, in its results and delineations, it is much 
more likely to interest the Compilers of some Library 
of General, Entertaining, Useful, or even Useless Knowl- 
edge than the miscellaneous readers of these pages. Was 
it this Part of the Book which Heuschrecke had in view, 
when he recommended us to that joint-stock vehicle of 
publication, ' at present the glory of British Literature '? 
If so, the Library Editors are welcome to dig in it for 
their own behoof. 

To the First Chapter, which turns on Paradise and 
Fig-leaves, and leads us into interminable disquisitions 



32 SARTOR RESARTUS 

of a mythological, metaphorical, cabalistico-sartorial and 
quite antediluvian cast, we shall content ourselves with 
giving an unconcerned approval. Still less have we to 
do with ' Lilis, Adam's first wife, whom, according to 
the Talmudists, he had before Eve, and who bore him, 
in that wedlock, the whole progeny of aerial, aquatic, 
and terrestrial Devils/ — very needlessly, we think. On 
this portion of the Work, with its profound glances into 
the Adam-Kadmon, or Primeval Element, here strangely 
brought into relation with the Nifl and Muspel (Dark- 
ness and Light) of the antique North, it may be enough 
to say, that its correctness of deduction, and depth of 
Talmudic and Rabbinical lore have filled perhaps not 
the worst Hebraist in Britain with something like as- 
tonishment. 

But, quitting this twilight region, Teufelsdrockh 
hastens from the Tower of Babel, to follow the dis- 
persion of Mankind over the whole habitable and habi- 
lable globe. Walking by the light of Oriental, Pelasgic, 
Scandinavian, Egyptian, Otaheitean, Ancient and Mod- 
ern researches of every conceivable kind, he strives to 
give us in compressed shape (as the Niirnbergers give 
an Orbis Pictus) an Orbis Vestitus; or view of the 
costumes of all mankind, in all countries, in all times. 
It is here that to the Antiquarian, to the Historian, we 
can triumphantly say: Fall to! Here is learning: an 
irregular Treasury, if you will; but inexhaustible as 
the Hoard of King Nibelung, which twelve wagons in 
twelve days, at the rate of three journeys a day, could 
not carry off. Sheep-skin cloaks and wampum belts; 
phylacteries, stoles, albs ; chlamydes, togas, Chinese silks, 
Afghaun shawls, trunk-hose, leather breeches, Celtic 
philibegs (though breeches, as the name Gallia Braccata 
indicates, are the more ancient), Hussar cloaks, Vandyke 
tippets, ruffs, fardingales, are brought vividly before us, 



THE WORLD IN CLOTHES 33 

— even the Kilmarnock nightcap is not forgotten. For 
most part, too, we must admit that the Learning, hetero- 
geneous as it is, and tumbled-down quite pell-mell, is 
true concentrated and purified Learning, the drossy 
parts smelted out and thrown aside. 

Philosophical reflections intervene, and sometimes 
touching pictures of human life. Of this sort the fol- 
lowing has surprised us. The first purpose of Clothes, 
as our Professor imagines, was not warmth or decency, 
but ornament. ' Miserable indeed/ says he, ' was the 
condition of the Aboriginal Savage, glaring fiercely from 
under his fleece of hair, which with the beard reached 
down to his loins, and hung round him like a matted 
cloak; the rest of his body sheeted in its thick natural 
fell. He loitered in the sunny glades of the forest, 
living on wild-fruits; or, as the ancient Caledonian, 
squatted himself in morasses, lurking for his bestial or 
human prey; without implements, without arms, save 
the ball of heavy Flint, to which, that his sole possession 
and defence might not be lost, he had attached a long 
cord of plaited thongs; thereby recovering as well as 
hurling it with deadly unerring skill. Nevertheless, the 
pains of Hunger and Revenge once satisfied, his next 
care was not Comfort but Decoration (Puts). Warmth 
he found in the toils of the chase; or amid dried leaves, 
in his hollow tree, in his bark shed, or natural grotto: 
but for Decoration he must have Clothes. Nay, among 
wild people, we find tattooing and painting even prior 
to Clothes. The first spiritual want of a barbarous man 
is Decoration, as indeed we still see among the barbarous 
classes in civilized countries. 

* Reader, the heaven-inspired melodious Singer; loft- 
iest Serene Highness; nay thy own amber-looked, snow- 
and-rose-bloom Maiden, worthy to glide sylphlike almost 
on air, whom thou lovest, worshipest as a divine Pres- 

\ 



34 SARTOR RESARTUS 

ence, which, indeed, symbolically taken, she is, — has 
descended, like thyself, from that same hair-mantled, 
flint-hurling Aboriginal Anthropophagus I Out of the 
eater cometh forth meat; out of the strong cometh forth 
sweetness. What changes are wrought, not by Time, 
yet in Time ! For not Mankind only, but all that Man- 
kind does or beholds, is in continual growth, re-genesis 
and self-perfecting vitality. Cast forth thy Act, thy 
Word, into the ever-living, ever- working Universe: it is 
a seed-grain that cannot die; unnoticed to-day (says 
one), it will be found flourishing as a Banyan-grove (per- 
haps, alas, as a Hemlock- forest!) after a thousand 
years. 

* He who first shortened the labor of Copyists by de- 
vice of Movable Types was disbanding hired Armies, 
and cashiering most Kings and Senates, and creating 
a whole new Democratic world: he had invented the Art 
of Printing. The first ground handful of Niter, Sul- 
phur, and Charcoal drove Monk Schwartz's pestle 
through the ceiling: what will the last do? Achieve the 
final undisputed prostration of Force under Thought, of 
Animal courage under Spiritual. A simple invention it 
was in the old-world Grazier, — sick of lugging his slow 
Ox about the country till he got it bartered for corn or 
oil, — to take a piece of Leather, and thereon scratch 
or stamp the mere Figure of an Ox (or Pecus) ; put it 
in his pocket, and call it Pecunia, Money. Yet hereby 
did Barter grow Sale, the Leather Money is now Golden 
and Paper, and all miracles have been out-miracled : for 
there are Rothschilds and English National Debts; and 
whoso has sixpence is sovereign (to the length of six- 
pence) over all men; commands cooks to feed him, 
philosophers to teach him, kings to mount guard over 
him, — to the length of sixpence. — Clothes too, which 
began in foolishest love of Ornament, what have they 



THE WORLD IN CLOTHES 35 

not become! Increased Security and pleasurable Heat 
soon followed: but what of these? Shame, divine Shame, 
(Schaarn, Modesty), as yet a stranger to the Anthropo- 
phagous bosom, arose there mysteriously under Clothes; 
a mystic grove-encircled shrine for the Holy in man. 
Clothes gave us individuality, distinctions, social polity; 
Clothes have made Men of us; they are threatening to 
make Clothes-screens of us. 

' But, on the whole,' continues our eloquent Professor, 
* Man is a Tool-using Animal (Handthierendes Thier). 
Weak in himself, and of small stature, he stands on a 
basis, at most for the flattest-soled, of some half-square 
foot, insecurely enough; has to straddle out his legs, 
lest the very wind supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds I 
Three quintals are a crushing load for him; the steer 
of the meadow tosses him aloft, like a waste rag. Never- 
theless he can use Tools, can devise Tools: with these 
the granite mountain melts into light dust before him; 
he kneads glowing iron, as if it were soft paste; seas are 
his smooth highway, winds j and fire his unwearying 
steeds. Nowhere do you find him without Tools : without 
Tools he is nothing, with Tools he is all/ 

Here may we not, for a moment, interrupt the stream 
of Oratory with a remark, that this Definition of the 
Tool-using Animal appears to us, of all that Animal- 
sort, considerably the precisest and best? Man is called 
a Laughing Animal: but do not the apes also laugh, or 
attempt to do it; and is the manliest man the greatest 
and oftenest laugher? Teufelsdrockh himself, as we 
said, laughed only once. Still less do we make of that 
other French Definition of the Cooking Animal; which, 
indeed, for rigorous scientific purposes, is as good as 
useless. Can a Tartar be said to cook, when he only 
readies his steak by riding on it? Again, what Cookery 
does the Greenlander use, beyond stowing-up his whale- 



36 SARTOR RESARTUS 



blubber, as a marmot, in the like case, might do? Or 
how would Monsieur Ude prosper among those Orinoeco 
Indians who, according to Humboldt, lodge in crow- 
nests, on the branches of trees; and, for half the year, 
have no victuals but pipe-clay, the whole country being 
under water? But, on the other hand, show us the 
human being, of any period or climate, without his Tools r 
those very Caledonians, as we saw, had their Flint-ball, 
and Thong to it, such as no brute has or can have. 

' Man is a Tool-using Animal,' concludes Teufels- 
drockh in his abrupt way; 'of which truth Clothes are 
but one example: and surely if we consider the interval 
between the first wooden Dibble fashioned by man, and 
those Liverpool Steam-carriages, or the British House 
of Commons, we shall note what progress he has made. 
He digs up certain black stones from the bosom of the 
earth, and says to them, Transport me and this luggage 
at the rate of five-and-thirty miles an hour; and they do 
it: he collects, apparently by lot, six-hundred and fifty- 
eight miscellaneous individuals, and says to them, Make 
this nation toil for us, bleed for us, hunger and sorrow 
and sin for us; and they do it/ 



CHAPTER VI 

APRONS 

One of the most unsatisfactory Sections in the whole 
Volume is that on Aprons. What though stout old 
Gao, the Persian Blacksmith, ' whose Apron, now in- 
deed hidden under jewels, because raised in revolt which 
proved successful, is still the royal standard of that 
country'; what though John Knox's Daughter, 'who 



)r 



APRONS 37 

threatened Sovereign Majesty that she would catch her 
husband's head in her Apron, rather than he should lie 
and be a bishop '; what though the Landgravine Eliza- 
beth, with many other Apron worthies, — figure here? 
An idle wire-drawing spirit, sometimes even a tone of 
levity, approaching to conventional satire, is too clearly 
discernible. What, for example, are we to make of such 
sentences as the following? 

'Aprons are Defenses; against injury to cleanliness, 
to safety, to modesty, sometimes to roguery. From 
the thin slip of notched silk (as it were, the emblem 
and beatified ghost of an Apron), which some highest- 
bred housewife, sitting at Nurnberg Workboxes and 
Toyboxes, has gracefully fastened on; to the thick- 
tanned hide, girt round him with thongs, wherein the 
Builder builds, and at evening sticks his trowel; or to 
those jingling sheet-iron Aprons, wherein your other- 
wise half-naked Vulcans hammer and smelt in their 
smelt-furnace, — is there not range enough in the fashion 
and uses of this Vestment? How much has been con- 
cealed, how much has been defended in Aprons ! Nay, 
rightly considered, what is your whole Military and 
Police Establishment, charged at uncalculated millions, 
but a huge scarlet-colored, iron-fastened Apron, wherein 
Society works (uneasily enough) ; guarding itself from 
some soil and stithy-sparks, in this Devil's-smithy (Teu- 
felsschmiede) of a world? But of all Aprons the most 
puzzling to me hitherto has been the Episcopal or Cas- 
sock. Wherein consists the usefulness of this Apron? 
The Overseer (Episcopus) of Souls, I notice, has tucked 
in the corner of it, as if his day's work were done: what 
does he shadow forth thereby ? ' &c. &c. 

Or again, has it often been the lot of our readers to 
read such stuff as we shall now quote ? 

' I consider those printed Paper Aprons, worn by the 



38 SARTOR RESARTUS 

Parisian Cooks, as a new vent, though a slight one, for 
Typography; therefore as an encouragement to modern 
Literature, and deserving of approval; nor is it without 
satisfaction that I hear of a celebrated London Firm 
having in view to introduce the same fashion, with im- 
portant extensions, in England.' — We who are on the 
spot hear of no such thing; and indeed have reason to 
be thankful that hitherto there are other vents for our 
Literature, exuberant as it is. — Teufelsdrockh continues: 
* If such supply of printed Paper should rise so far as 
to choke-up the highways and public thoroughfares, new 
means must of necessity be had recourse to. In a world 
existing by Industry, we grudge to employ fire as a 
destroying element, and not as a creating one. However, 
Heaven is omnipotent, and will find us an outlet. In 
the meanwhile, is it not beautiful to see five-million 
quintals of Rags picked annually from the Laystall; 
and annually, after being macerated, hot-pressed, 
printed-on, and sold, — returned thither; filling so many 
hungry mouths by the way? Thus is the Laystall, 
especially with its Rags or Clothes-rubbish, the grand 
Electric Battery, and Fountain-of-motion, from which 
and to which the Social Activities (like vitreous and 
resinous Electricities) circulate, in larger cr smaller 
circles, through the mighty, billowy, stormtost Chaos of 
Life, which they keep alive ! ' — Such passages fill us, 
who love the man, and partly esteem him, with a very 
mixed feeling. 

Farther down we meet with this : ' The Journalists 
are now the true Kings and Clergy: henceforth His- 
torians, unless they are fools, must write not of Bourbon 
Dynasties, and Tudors and Hapsburgs; but of Stamped 
Broad-sheet Dynasties, and quite new successive Names, 
according as this or the other Able Editor, or Combina- 
tion of Able Editors, gains the world's ear. Of the 



MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL 39 

British Newspaper Press, perhaps the most important 
of all, and wonderful enough in its secret constitution 
and procedure, a valuable descriptive History already 
exists, in that language, under the title of Satan's In- 
visible World Displayed; which, however, by search in 
all the Weissnichtwo Libraries, I have not yet suc- 
ceeded in procuring (vermochte nicht aufzutreiben).' 

Thus does the good Homer not only nod, but snore. 
Thus does Teufelsdrockh, wandering in regions where he 
had little business, confound the old authentic Presby- 
terian Witchfinder with a new, spurious, imaginary His- 
torian of the Brittische J ournalistik ; and so rtumble on 
perhaps the most egregious blunder in Modern Litera- 
ture ! 



CHAPTER VII 

MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL 

Happier is our Professor, and more purely scientific 
and historic, when he reaches the Middle Ages in Europe, 
and down to the end of the Seventeenth Century; the 
true era of extravagance in Costume. It is here that 
the Antiquary and Studert of Modes comes upon his 
richest harvest. Fantastic garbs, beggaring all fancy 
of a Teniers or a Callot, succeeded each other, like 
monster devouring monster in a Dream. The whole 
too in brief authentic strokes, and touched not seldom 
with that breath of genius which makes even old raiment 
live. Indeed, so learned, precise, graphical, and every- 
way interesting have we found these Chapters, that it 
may be thrown-out as a pertinent question for parties 
concerned, Whether or not a good English translation 
thereof might henceforth be profitably incorporated 



40 SARTOR RESARTUS 

with Mr. Merrick's valuable Work On Ancient Armor? 
Take, by way of example, the following sketch; as 
authority for which Paulinus's Zeitkiirzende Lust (ii. 
678) is, with seeming confidence, referred to: 

' Did we behold the German fashionable dress of the 
Fifteenth Century, we might smile; as perhaps those 
bygone Germans, were they to rise again, and see our 
haberdashery, would cross themselves, and invoke the 
Virgin. But happily no bygone German, or man, rises 
again ; thus the Present is not needlessly trammeled with 
the Past; and only grows out of it, like a Tree, whose 
roots are not intertangled with its branches, but lie 
peaceably underground. Nay it is very mournful, yet 
not useless, to see and know, how the Greatest and Dear- 
est, in a short while, would find his place quite filled-up 
here, and no room for him; the very Napoleon, the very 
Byron, in some seven years, has become obsolete, and 
were now a foreigner to his Europe. This is the law of 
Progress secured; and in Clothes, as in all other ex- 
ternal things whatsoever, no fashion will continue. 

' Of the military classes in those old times, whose buff- 
belts, complicated chains and gorgets, huge churn-boots, 
and other riding and fighting gear have been bepainted 
in modern Romance, till the whole has acquired some- 
what of a sign-post character, — I shall here say nothing: 
the civil and pacific classes, less touched upon, are won- 
derful enough for us. 

' Rich men, I find, have Teusinke ' (a perhaps untrans- 
latable article) ; ' also a silver girdle, whereat hang 
little bells ; so that when a man walks, it is with continual 
jingling. Some few, of musical turn, have a whole 
chime of bells {Glockenspiel) fastened there; which, 
especially in sudden whirls, and the other accidents of 
walking, has a grateful effect. Observe too how fond 
they are of peaks, and Gothic-arch intersections. The 



MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL 41 

male world wears .peaked caps, an ell long, which hang 
bobbing over the side (schief) : their shoes are peaked 
in front, also to the length of an ell, and laced on the 
side with tags ; even the wooden shoes have their ell-long 
noses: some also clap bells on the peak. Further, ac- 
cording to my authority, the men have breeches without 
seat (ohne Gesass) : these they fasten peakwise to their 
shirts ; and the long round doublet must overlap them. 

' Rich maidens, again, flit abroad in gowns scolloped 
out behind and before, so that back and breast are almost 
bare. Wives of quality, on the other hand, have train- 
gowns four or five ells in length; which trains there are 
boys to carry. Brave Cleopatras, sailing in their silk- 
cloth Galley, with a Cupid for steersman ! Consider 
their welts, a handbreadth thick, which waver round 
them by way of hem; the long flood of silver buttons, or 
rather silver shells, from throat to shoe, wherewith these 
same welt-gowns are buttoned. The maidens have bound 
silver snoods about their hair, with gold spangles, and 
pendent flames (Flammen) , that is, sparkling hair-drops: 
but of their mother's headgear who shall speak ? Neither 
in love of grace is comfort forgotten. In winter weather 
you behold the whole fair creation (that can afford it) 
in long mantles, with skirts wide below, and, for hem, 
not one but two sufficient hand-broad welts; all ending 
atop in a thick well-starched Ruff, some twenty inches 
broad: these are their Ruff-mantles (Kragenmantel) . 

' As yet among the womankind hoop-petticoats are 
not; but the men have doublets of fustian, under which 
lie multiple ruffs of cloth, pasted together with batter 
(mit Teig zuscvmmen-gekleistert) , which create protuber- 
ance enough. Thus do the two sexes vie with each other 
in the art of Decoration; and as usual the stronger car- 
ries it/ 

Our Professor, whether he have humor himself or not, 



42 SARTOR RESARTUS 

manifests a certain feeling of the Ludicrous, a sly ob- 
servance of it, which, could emotion of any kind be 
confidently predicated of so still a man, we might call 
a real love. None of those bell-girdles, bushel-breeches, 
cornuted shoes, or other the like phenomena, of which 
the History of Dress offers so many, escape him: more 
especially the mischances, or striking adventures, inci- 
dent to the wearers of such, are noticed with due fidelity. 
Sir Walter Raleigh's fine mantle, which he spread in 
the mud under Queen Elizabeth's feet, appears to pro- 
voke little enthusiasm in him; he merely asks, Whether 
at that period the Maiden Queen ' was red-painted on 
the nose, and white-painted on the cheeks, as her tire- 
women, when from spleen and wrinkles she would no 
longer look in any glass, were wont to serve her ? ' We 
can answer that Sir Walter knew well what he was 
doing, and had the Maiden Queen been stuffed parch- 
ment dyed in verdigris, would have done the same. 

Thus too, treating of those enormous habiliments, that 
were not only slashed and galooned, but artificially 
swollen-out on the broader parts of the body, by intro- 
duction of Bran, — our Professor fails not to comment 
on that luckless Courtier, who having seated himself on 
a chair with some projecting nail on it, and therefrom 
rising, to pay his devoir on the entrance of Majesty, 
instantaneously emitted several pecks of dry wheat-dust: 
and stood there diminished to a spindle, his galoons and 
slashes dangling sorrowful and flabby round him. 
Whereupon the Professor publishes this reflection: 

* By what strange chances do we live in History ? 
Erostratus by a torch; Milo by a bullock; Henry Darn- 
ley, an unfledged booby and bustard, by his limbs ; most 
Kings and Queens by being born under such and such 
a bed-tester; Boileau Despreaux (according to Helve- 
tius) by the peck of a turkey; and this ill-starred indi- 



THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES 4,3 

vidual by a rent in his breeches, — for no Memoirist of 
Kaiser Otto's Court omits him. Vain was the prayer 
of Themistocles for a talent of Forgetting: my Friends, 
yield cheerfully to Destiny, and read since it is written/ 
— Has Teufelsdrockh to be put in mind that, nearly re- 
lated to the impossible talent of Forgetting, stands that 
talent of Silence, which even traveling Englishmen mani- 
fest? 

* The simplest costume,' observes our Professor, ' which 
I anywhere find alluded to in History, is that used as 
regimental, by Bolivar's Cavalry, in the late Columbian 
wars. A square Blanket, twelve feet in diagonal, is 
provided (some were wont to cut-off the corners, and 
make it circular) : in the center a slit is effected eighteen 
inches long; through this the mother-naked Trooper in- 
troduces his head and neck; and so rides shielded from 
all weather, and in battle from many strokes (for he 
rolls it about his left arm) ; and not only dressed, but 
harnessed and draperied.' 

With which picture of a State of Nature, affecting by 
its singularity, and Old-Roman contempt of the super- 
fluous^ we shall quit this part of our subject. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES 

If in the Descriptive-Historical portion of this Vol- 
ume, Teufelsdrockh, discussing merely the Werden 
(Origin and successive Improvement) of Clothes, has 
astonished many a reader, much more will he in the 
speculative-Philosophical portion, which treats of their 
Wirken, or Influences. It is here that the present Ed- 



44 SARTOR RESARTUS 

itor first feels the pressure of his task; for here prop-' 
erly the higher and new Philosophy of Clothes com- 
mences: an untried, almost inconceivable region, or 
chaos; in venturing upon which, how difficult, yet how 
unspeakably important is it to know what course, of 
survey and conquest, is the true one; where the foot- 
ing is firm substance and will bear us, where it is hol- 
low, or mere cloud, and may engulf us ! Teufelsdrockh 
undertakes no less than to«expound the moral, political, 
even religious Influences of Clothes; he undertakes to 
make manifest, in its thousandfold bearings, this grand 
Proposition, that Man's earthly interests, ' are all 
hooked and buttoned together, and held up, by Clothes.' 
He says in so many words, ' Society is founded upon 
Cloth ' ; and again, ' Society sails through the Infinitude 
on Cloth, as on a Faust's Mantle, or rather like the 
Sheet of clean and unclean beasts in the Apostle's 
Dream; and without such Sheet or Mantle, would sink 
to endless depths, or mount to inane limboes, and in 
either case be no more.' 

By what chains, or indeed infinitely complected tis- 
sues, of meditation this grand Theorem is here unfolded, 
and innumerable practical Corollaries are drawn there- 
from, it were perhaps a mad ambition to attempt ex- 
hibiting. Our Professor's method is not, in any case, 
that of common school Logic, where the truths all stand 
in a row, each holding by the skirts of the other; but 
at best that of practical Reason, proceeding by large 
Intuition over whole systematic groups and kingdoms; 
whereby, we might say, a noble complexity, almost like 
that of Nature, reigns in his Philosophy, or spiritual 
Picture of Nature: a mighty maze, yet, as faith whis- 
pers, not without a plan. Nay we complained above, 
that a certain ignoble complexity, what we must call 
mere confusion, was also discernible. Often, also, we 



THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES 45 

have to exclaim: Would to Heaven those same Bio- 
graphical Documents were come ! For it seems as if 
the demonstration lay much in the Author's individ- 
uality; as if it were not Argument that had taught him, 
but Experience. At present it is only in local glimpses, 
and by significant fragments, picked often at wide- 
enough intervals from the original Volume, and care- 
fully collated, that we can hope to impart some out- 
line or foreshadow of this Doctrine. Readers of any 
intelligence are once more invited to favor us with their 
most concentrated attention: let these, after intense con- 
sideration, and not till then, pronounce, Whether on 
the utmost verge of our actual horizon there is not a 
looming as of Land; a promise of new Fortunate Is- 
lands, perhaps whole undiscovered Americas, for such 
as have canvas to sail thither? — As exordium to the 
whole, stand here the following long citation: 

' With men of a speculative turn,' writes Teufels- 
drockh, ' there come seasons, meditative, sweet, yet awful 
hours, when in wonder and fear you ask yourself that 
unanswerable question: Who am J; the thing that can 
say " I " (das Wesen das sick Ich nennt) ? The world, 
with its loud trafficking, retires into the distance; and, 
through the paper-hangings, and stone-walls, and thick- 
plied tissues of Commerce and Polity, and all the living 
and lifeless integuments (of Society and a Body), where- 
with your Existence sits surrounded, — the sight reaches 
forth into the void Deep, and you are alone with the 
Universe, and silently commune with it, as one mys- 
terious Presence with another. 

* Who am I ; what is this Me ? A Voice, a Motion, 
an Appearance; — some embodied, visualized Idea in 
the Eternal Mind? Cogito, ergo sum. Alas, poor 
Cogitator, this takes us but a little way. Sure enough, 
I am; and lately was not: but Whence? How? Where- 



46 SARTOR RESARTUS 



and 



to? The answer lies around, written in all colors 
motions, uttered in all tones of jubilee and wail, in thou- 
sand-figured, thousand-voiced, harmonious Nature: but 
where is the cunning eye and ear to whom that God- 
written Apocalypse will yield articulate meaning? We 
sit as in a boundless Phantasmagoria and Dream- 
grotto; boundless, for the faintest star, the remotest 
century, lies not even nearer the verge thereof: sounds 
and many-colored visions flit round our sense; but Him, 
the Unslumbering, whose work both Dream and Dreamer 
are, we see not; except in rare half -waking moments, 
suspect not. Creation, says one, lies before us, like 
a glorious Rainbow; but the Sun that made it lies be- 
hind us, hidden from us. Then, in that strange Dream, 
how we clutch at shadows as if they were substances; 
and sleep deepest while fancying ourselves most awake ! 
Which of your Philosophical Systems is other than a 
dream-theorem; a net quotient, confidently given out, 
where divisor and dividend are both unknown? What 
are all your national Wars, with their Moscow Retreats, 
and sanguinary hate-filled Revolutions, but the Som- 
nambulism of uneasy Sleepers? This Dreaming, this 
Somnambulism is what we on Earth call Life; wherein 
the most indeed undoubtedly wander, as if they knew 
right hand from left; yet they only are wise who know 
that they know nothing. 

* Pity that all Metaphysics had hitherto proved so 
inexpressibly unproductive ! The secret of Man's Being 
is still like the Sphinx's secret: a riddle that he cannot 
rede; and for ignorance of which he suffers death, the 
worst death, a spiritual. What are your Axioms, and 
Categories, and Systems, and Aphorisms? Words, 
words. High Air-castles are cunningly built of Words, 
the Words well bedded also in good Logic-mortar ; 
wherein, however, no Knowledge will come to lodge. 



THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES 47 

The whole is greater than the part: how exceedingly 
true! Nature abhors a vacuum: how exceedingly false 
and calumnious! Again, Nothing can act but where it 
is: with all my heart; only, where is it? Be not the 
slave of Words: is not the Distant, the Dead, while I 
love it, and long for it, and mourn for it, Here, in the 
genuine sense, as truly as the floor I stand on? But 
that same Where, with its brother When, are from 
the first the master-colors of our Dream-grotto; say 
rather, the Canvas (the warp and woof thereof) whereon 
all our Dreams and Life-visions are painted. Never- 
theless, has not a deeper meditation taught certain of 
every climate and age, that the Where and When, so 
mysteriously inseparable from all our thoughts, are but 
superficial terrestrial adhesions to thought; that the Seer 
may discern them where they mount up out of the celes- 
tial Everywhere and forever: have not all nations 
conceived their God as Omnipresent and Eternal; as 
existing in a universal Here, an everlasting now ? Think 
well, thou too wilt find that Space is but a mode of our 
human Sense, so likewise Time; there is no Space and 
no Time: We are — we know not what; — light-sparkles 
floating in the ether of Deity! 

' So that this so solid-seeming World, after all, were 
but an air-image, our Me the only reality: and Nature, 
with its thousandfold production and destruction, but 
the reflex of our own inward Force, the " phantasy of 
our Dream"; or what the Earth-Spirit in Faust names 
it, the living visible Garment of God: 

' " In Being's floods, in Action's storm, 
I walk and work, above, beneath, 
Work and weave in endless motion! 
Birth and Death, 
An infinite ocean; 



48 SARTOR RESARTUS 

A seizing and giving 

The fire of Living: 
'Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply, 
And weave for God the Garment thou seest Him by." 

Of twenty millions that have read and spouted this 
thunder-speech of the Erdgeist, are there yet twenty 
units of us that have learned the meaning thereof? 

' It was in some such mood, when wearied and for- 
done with these high speculations, that I first came 
upon the question of Clothes. Strange enough, it 
strikes me, is this same fact of there being Tailors and 
Tailored. The Horse I ride has his own whole fell: 
strip him of the girths and flaps and extraneous tags 
I have fastened round him, and the noble creature is 
his own sempster and weaver and spinner; nay his own 
boot-maker, jeweler, and man-milliner; he bounds free 
through the valleys, with a perennial rainproof court- 
suit on his body; wherein warmth and easiness of fit 
have reached perfection; nay, the graces also have been 
considered, and frills and fringes, with gay variety of 
color, featly appended, and ever in the right place, are 
not wanting. While I — good Heaven! — have thatched 
myself over with the dead fleeces of sheep, the bark of 
vegetables, the entrails of worms, the hides of oxen or 
seals, the felt of furred beasts ; and walk abroad a mov- 
ing Rag-screen, overheaped with shreds and tatters 
raked from the Charnel-house of Nature, where they 
would have rotted, to rot on me more slowly ! Day after 
day, I must thatch myself anew; day after day, this 
despicable thatch must lose some film of its thickness; 
some film of it, frayed away by tear and wear, must 
be brushed-ofF into the Ashpit, into the Laystall; till by 
degrees the whole has been brushed thither, and I, the 
dust-making, patent Rag-grinder, get new material to 
grind down. O subter-brutish ! vile! most vile! For 



THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES 49 

have not I too a compact all-enclosing Skin, whiter or 
dingier? Am I a botched mass of tailors' and cob- 
blers' shreds, then; or a tightly-articulated, homogene- 
ous little Figure, automatic, nay alive? 

' Strange enough how creatures of the human-kind 
shut their eyes to plainest facts ; and by the mere inertia 
of Oblivion and Stupidity, live at ease in the midst of 
Wonders and Terrors. But indeed man is, and was al- 
ways, a blockhead and dullard; much readier to feel 
and digest, than to think and consider. Prejudice, 
which he pretends to hate, is his absolute lawgiver; 
mere use-and-wont everywhere leads him by the nose; 
thus let but a Rising of the Sun, let but a Creation of 
the World happen twice, and it ceases to be marvelous, 
to be noteworthy, or noticeable. Perhaps not once in a 
lifetime does it occur to your ordinary biped, of any 
country or generation, be he gold-mantled Prince, or rus- 
set-jerkined Peasant, that his Vestments and his Self 
are not one and indivisible; that he is naked, without 
vestments, till he buy or steal such, and by forethought 
sew and button them. 

' For my own part, these considerations, of our 
Clothes-thatch, and how, reaching inwards even to our 
heart of hearts, it tailorizes and demoralizes us, fill me 
with a certain horror at myself and mankind; almost 
as one feels at those Dutch Cows, which, during the 
wet season, you see grazing deliberately with jackets 
and petticoats (of striped sacking), in the meadows 
of Gouda. Nevertheless there is something great in 
the moment when a man first strips himself of adventi- 
tious wrappages; and sees indeed that he is naked, and, 
as Swift has it, " a forked straddling animal with bandy 
legs"; yet also a Spirit, and unutterable Mystery of 
Mysteries/ 



50 SARTOR RESARTUS 

} CHAPTER IX 

ADAMITISM 

Let no courteous reader take offense at the opinions 
broached in the conclusion of the last Chapter. The 
Editor himself, on first glancing over that singular pas- 
sage, was inclined to exclaim: What, have we got not 
only a Sansculottist, but an enemy to Clothes in the 
abstract? A new Adamite, in this century, which flat- 
ters itself that it is the Nineteenth, and destructive both 
to Superstition and Enthusiasm? 

Consider, thou foolish Teufelsdrockh, what benefits 
unspeakable all ages and sexes derive from Clothes. 
For example, when thou thyself, a watery, pulpy, slob- 
bery freshman and new-comer in this Planet, sattest 
muling and puking in thy nurse's arms; sucking thy 
coral, and looking forth into the world in the blankest 
manner, what hadst thou been without thy blankets^ 
and bibs, and other nameless hulls? A terror to thy- 
self and mankind ! Or hast thou forgotten the day 
when thou first receivedst breeches, and thy long clothes 
became short? The village where thou livedst was all 
apprised of the fact; and neighbor after neighbor kissed 
thy pudding-cheek, and gave thee, as handsel, silver 
or copper coins, on that the first gala-day of thy ex- 
istence. Again, wert not thou, at one period of life, a 
Buck, or Blood, or Macaroni, or Incroj^able, or Dandy, 
or by whatever name, according to year and place, such 
phenomenon is distinguished? In that one word lie 
included mysterious volumes. Nay, now when the reign 
of folly is over, or altered, and thy clothes are not for 
triumph but for defense, hast thou always worn them 
perforce, and as a consequence of Man's Fall; never re- 



ADAMITISM 51 

joiced in them as in a warm movable House, a Body 
round thy Body, wherein that strange Thee of thine 
sat snug, defying all variations of Climate? Girt with 
thick double-milled kerseys; half-buried under shawls 
and broadbrims, and overalls and mud-boots, thy very 
fingers cased in doeskin and mittens, thou hast bestrode 
that ' Horse I ride ' ; and, though it were in wild win- 
ter, dashed through the world, glorying in it as if thou 
wert its lord. In vain did the sleet beat round thy 
temples; it lighted only on thy impenetrable, felted or 
woven, case of wool. In vain did the winds howl, — 
forests sounding and creaking, deep calling unto deep, — 
and the storms heap themselves together into one huge 
Arctic whirlpool: thou newest through the middle there- 
of, striking fire from the highway; wild music hummed 
in thy ears, thou too wert as a ' sailor of the air ' ; the 
wreck of matter and the crash of worlds was thy ele- 
ment and propitiously wafting tide. Without Clothes, 
without bit or saddle, what hadst thou been; what had 
thy fleet quadruped been? — Nature is good, but she is 
not the best: here truly was the victory of Art over Na- 
ture. A thunderbolt indeed might have pierced thee; 
all short of this thou couldst defy. 

Or, cries the courteous reader, has your Teufelsdrockh 
forgotten what he said lately about ' Aboriginal Sav- 
ages/ and their ' condition miserable indeed ' ? Would 
he have all this unsaid; and us betake ourselves again 
to the ' matted cloak/ and go sheeted in a ' thick nat- 
ural fell'? 

Nowise, courteous reader ! The Professor knows full 
well what he is saying; and both thou and we, in our 
haste, do him wrong. If Clothes, in these times, ' so 
tailorize and demoralize us,' have ihey no redeeming 
value; can they not be altered to serve better; must they 
of necessity be thrown to the dogs ? The truth is, Teu- 




52 SARTOR RESARTUS 

felsdrockh, though a Sansculottist, is no Adamite; and 
much perhaps as he might wish to go forth before this 
degenerate age ' as a Sign/ would nowise wish to do it, 
as those old Adamites did, in a state of Nakedness. 
The utility of Clothes is altogether apparent to him: 
nay perhaps he has an insight into their more recon- 
dite, and almost mystic qualities, what we might call 
the omnipotent virtue of Clothes, such as was never be- 
fore vouchsafed to any man. For example: 

' You see two individuals/ he writes, ' one dressed 
in fine Red, the other in coarse threadbare Blue: Red 
says to Blue, " Be hanged and anatomized"; Blue hears 
with a shudder, and (O wonder of wonders!) marches 
sorrowfully to the gallows; is there noosed-up, vibrates 
his hour, and the surgeons dissect him, and fit his bones 
into a skeleton for medical purposes. How is this; or 
what make ye of your Nothing can act but where it is? 
Red has no physical hold of Blue, no clutch of him, is 
nowise in contact with him: neither are those ministering 
Sheriff's and Lord-Lieutenants and Hangmen and Tip- 
staves so related to commanding Red, that he can tug 
them hither and thither; but each stands distinct within 
his own skin. Nevertheless, as it is spoken, so is it 
done: the articulated Word sets all hands in Action; 
and Rope and Improved-drop perform their work. 

' Thinking reader, the reason seems to me twofold: 
First, that Man is a Spirit, and bound by invisible bonds 
to All Men; secondly, that he wears Clothes, which are 
the visible emblems of that fact. Has not your Red 
hanging-individual a horsehair wig, squirrel-skins, and 
a plush-gown; whereby all mortals know that he is a 
Judge? — Society, which the more I think of it aston- 
ishes me the more, is founde ' upon Cloth. 

' Often in my atrabiliar moods, when I read of pom- 
pous ceremonials, Frankfort Coronations, Royal Draw- 



ADAMITISM 53 

ing-rooms, Levees, Couchees; and how the ushers and 
macers and pursuivants are all in waiting; how Duke 
this is presented by Archduke that, and Colonel A by 
General B, and innumerable Bishops, Admirals, and mis- 
cellaneous Functionaries, are advancing gallantly to the 
Anointed Presence; and I strive, in my remote privacy, 
to form a clear picture of that solemnity,— on a sudden' 
as by some enchanter's wand, the— shall I speak it?— 
the Clothes fly-off the whole dramatic corps; and Dukes, 
Grandees, Bishops, Generals, Anointed Presence itself' 
every mother's son of them, stand straddling there, not 
a shirt on them; and I know not whether to laugh or 
weep. This physical or psychical infirmity, in which 
perhaps I am not singular, I have, after hesitation, 
thought right to publish, for the solace of those afflicted 
with the like.' 

Would to Heaven, say we, thou hadst thought right 
to keep it secret! Who is there now that can read the 
five columns of Presentations in his Morning Newspaper 
without a shudder? Hypochondriac men, and all men 
are to a certain extent hypochondriac, should be more 
gently treated. With what readiness our fancy, in this 
shattered state of the nerves, follows out the conse- 
quences which Teufelsdrockh, with a devilish coolness 
goes on to draw: 

- What would Majesty do, could such an accident be- 
fall m reality; should the buttons all simultaneously 
start, and the solid wool evaporate, in very Deed, as here 
in Dream? Ach Gott! How each skulks into the near- 
est hiding-place; their high State Tragedy (Haupt- und 
btaats-Action) becomes a Pickleherring Farce to weep 
at, which is the worst kind of Farce; the tables (accord- 
ing to Horace), and with them, the whole fabric of 
Government, Legislation, Property, Police, and Civilized 
Society, are dissolved, in wails and howls/ 



54 SARTOR RESARTUS 

Lives the man that can figure a naked Duke of Win- 
dlestraw addressing a naked House of Lords? Imag- 
ination, choked as in mephitic air, recoils on itself, and 
will not forward with the picture. The Woolsack, the 
Ministerial, the Opposition Benches — infandum! infan- 
dum! And yet why is the thing impossible? Was not 
every soul, or rather every body, of these Guardians of 
our Liberties, naked, or nearly so, last night; ' a forked 
Radish with a head fantastically carved ' ? And why 
might he not, did our stern fate so order it ; walk out 
to St. Stephen's, as well as into bed, in that no-fash- 
ion; and there, with other similar Radishes, hold a Bed 
of Justice ? ' Solace of those afflicted with the like ! * 
Unhappy Teufelsdrockh, had man ever such a ' physical 
or psychical infirmity ' before ? And now how many, 
perhaps, may thy unparalleled confession (which we, 
even to the sounder British world, and goaded-on by 
Critical and Biographical duty, grudge to reimpart) in- 
curably infect therewith! Art thou the malignest of 
Sansculottists, or only the maddest ? 

' It will remain to be examined,' adds the inexorable 
Teufelsdrockh, ' in how far the Scarecrow, as a Clothed 
Person, is not also entitled to benefit of clergy, and 
English trial by jury: nay perhaps, considering his high 
function (for is not he too a Defender of Property, and 
Sovereign armed with the terrors of the Law?), to a 
certain royal Immunity and Inviolability; which, how- 
ever, misers and the meaner class of persons are not 
always voluntarily disposed to grant him.' * * * * 
' O my friends, we are (in Yorick Sterne's words) but 
as " turkeys driven, with a stick and red clout, to the 
market " : or if some drivers, as they do in Norfolk, take 
a dried bladder and put peas in it, the rattle thereof 
terrifies the boldest ! ' 



PURE REASON 55 

CHAPTER X 

PURE REASON 

It must now be apparent enough that our Professor, 
as above hinted, is a speculative Radical, and of the 
very darkest tinge; acknowledging, for most part, in 
the solemnities and paraphernalia of civilized Life, which 
we make so much of, nothing but so many Cloth-rags, 
turkey-poles, and ' bladders with dried peas/ To lin- 
ger among such speculations, longer than mere Science 
requires, a discerning public can have no wish. For 
our purposes the simple fact that such a Naked World 
is possible, nay actually exists (under the Clothed one), 
will be sufficient. Much, therefore, we omit about 
' Kings wrestling naked on the green with Carmen/ and 
the Kings being thrown : ' dissect them with scalpels,' 
says Teuf elsdrockh ; ' the same viscera, tissues, livers, 
lights, and other life-tackle, are there: examine their 
spiritual mechanism; the same great Need, great Greed, 
and little Faculty; nay ten to one but the Carman, 
who understands draught-cattle, the rimming of wheels, 
something of the laws of unstable and stable equilibrium, 
with other branches of wagon-science, and has actually 
put forth his hand and operated on Nature, is the more 
cunningly gifted of the two. Whence, then, their so 
unspeakable difference? From Clothes/ Much also we 
shall omit about confusion of Ranks, and Joan and My 
Lady, and how it would be everywhere ' Hail fellow 
well met/ and Chaos were come again: all which to any 
one that has once fairly pictured-out the grand mother- 
idea, Society in a state of Nakedness, will spontaneously 
suggest itself. Should some skeptical individual still 
entertain doubts whether in a world without Clothes, 



56 SARTOR RESARTUS 

the smallest Politeness, Polity, or even Police, could 
exist, let him turn to the original Volume, and view there 
the boundless Serbonian Bog of Sansculottism, stretch- 
ing sour and pestilential: over which we have lightly 
flown; where not only whole armies but whole nations 
might sink! If indeed the following argument, in its 
brief riveting emphasis, be not of itself incontrovertible 
and final: 

' Are we Opossums ; have we natural Pouches, like 
the Kangaroo? Or how, without Clothes, could we pos- 
sess the master-organ, souFs seat, and true pineal gland 
of the Body Social: I mean, a Purse? ' 

Nevertheless it is impossible to hate Professor Teu- 
felsdrockh; at worst, one knows not whether to hate 
or to love him. For though, in looking at the fair 
tapestry of human Life, with its royal and even sacred 
figures, he dwells not on the obverse alone, but here 
chiefly on the reverse; and indeed turns out the rough 
seams, tatters, and manifold thrums of that unsightly 
wrong side, with an almost diabolic patience and in- 
difference, which must have sunk him in the estimation 
of most readers, — there is that within which unspeak- 
ably distinguishes him from all other past and present 
Sansculottists. The grand unparalleled peculiarity of 
Teufelsdrockh is, that with all this Descendentalism, 
he combines a Transcendentalism, no less superlative; 
whereby if on the one hand he degrade man below most 
animals, except those jacketed Gouda Cows, he, on the 
other, exalts him beyond the visible Heavens, almost 
to an equality with the Gods. 

' To the eye of vulgar Logic/ says he, ' what is man ? 
An omnivorous Biped that wears Breeches. To the eye 
of Pure Reason what is he? A Soul, a Spirit, and di- 
vine Apparition. Round his mysterious Me, there lies, 
under all those wool-rags, a Garment of Flesh (or of 



PURE REASON 57 

Senses), contextured in the Loom of Heaven; whereby 
he is revealed to his like, and dwells with them in Union 
and Division; and sees and fashions for himself a 
Universe, with azure Starry Spaces, and long Thousands 
of Years. Deep-hidden is he under that strange Gar- 
ment; amid Sounds and Colors and Forms, as it were, 
swathed-in, and inextricably over-shrouded: yet it is 
sky-woven, and worthy of a God. Stands he not thereby 
in the center of Immensities, in the conflux of Eterni- 
ties? He feels; power has been given him to know, to 
believe; nay does not the spirit of Love, free in its 
celestial primeval brightness, even here, though but for 
moments, look through? Well said Saint Chrysostom, 
with his lips of gold, " the true Shekinah is Man " ; 
where else is the God's-Presence manifested not to our 
eyes only, but to our hearts, as in our fellow-man? ' 

In such passages, unhappily too rare, the high Pla- 
tonic Mysticism of our Author, which is perhaps the 
fundamental element of his nature, bursts forth, as it 
were, in full flood: and, through all the vapor and tar- 
nish of what is often so perverse, so mean in his ex- 
terior and environment, we seem to look into a whole 
inward Sea of Light and Love; — though, alas, the grim 
coppery clouds soon roll together again, and hide it 
from view. 

Such tendency to Mysticism is everywhere traceable 
in this man; and indeed, to attentive readers, must 
have been long ago apparent. Nothing that he sees but 
has more than a common meaning, but has two mean- 
ings : thus, if in the highest Imperial Scepter and Char- 
lemagne-Mantle, as well as in the poorest Ox-goad and 
Gipsy-Blanket, he finds Prose, Decay, Contemptibility ; 
there is in each sort Poetry also, and a reverend Worth. 
For Matter, were it never so despicable, is Spirit, the 
manifestation of Spirit: were it never so honorable, can 



58 SARTOR RESARTUS 

it be more ? The thing Visible, nay the thing Imagined, 
the thing in any way conceived as Visible, what is it but 
a Garment, a Clothing of the higher, celestial Invisible, 
' unimaginable, formless, dark with excess of bright ' ? 
Under which point of view the following passage, so 
strange in purport, so strange in phrase, seems char- 
acteristic enough: 

' The beginning of all Wisdom is to look fixedly on 
Clothes, or even with armed eyesight, till they become 
transparent. ' The Philosopher," says the wisest of 
this age, "must station himself in the middle"; how 
true! The Philosopher is he to whom the Highest has 
descended, and the Lowest has mounted up; who is the 
equal and kindly brother of all. 

' Shall we tremble before clothwebs and cobwebs, 
whether woven in Arkwright looms, or by the silent 
Arachnes that weave unrestingly in our imagination? 
Or, on the other hand, what is there that we cannot 
love; since all was created by God? 

' Happy he who can look through the Clothes of a 
Man (the woollen, and fleshly, and official Bank-paper 
and State-paper Clothes) into the Man himself; and dis- 
cern, it may be, in this or the other Dread Potentate, a 
more or less incompetent Digestive-apparatus; yet also 
an inscrutable venerable Mystery, in the meanest Tinker 
that sees with eyes ! ' 

For the rest, as is natural to a man of this kind, he 
deals much in the feeling of Wonder; insists on the 
necessity and high worth of universal Wonder; which 
he holds to be the only reasonable temper for the deni- 
zen of so singular a Planet as ours. ' Wonder,' says 
he, ' is the basis of Worship : the reign of wonder is 
perennial, indestructible in Man; only at certain stages 
(as the present), it is, for some short season, a reign 
in partibus infidelium/ That progress of Science, which 



PURE REASON 5g 

is to destroy Wonder, and in its stead substitute Men- 
suration and Numeration, finds small favor with Teufels- 
drockh, much as he otherwise venerates these two lat- 
ter processes. 

'Shall your Science/ exclaims he, 'proceed in the 
small chink-lighted, or even oil-lighted, underground 
workshop of Logic alone; and man's mind become an 
Arithmetical Mill, whereof Memory is the Hopper, and 
mere Tables of Sines and Tangents, Codification,' and 
Treatises of what you call Political Economy, are the 
Meal? And what is that Science, which the scientific 
head alone, were it screwed off, and (like the Doctor's 
in the Arabian Tale) set in a basin to keep it alive, 
could prosecute without shadow of a heart, — but one 
other of the mechanical and menial handicrafts, for 
which the Scientific Head (having a Soul in it) is too 
noble an organ? I mean that Thought without Rever- 
ence is barren, perhaps poisonous; at best, dies like 
cookery with the day that called it forth; does not live, 
like sowing, in successive tilths and wider-spreading 
harvests, bringing food and plenteous increase to all 
Time.' 

In such wise does Teufelsdrockh deal hits, harder or 
softer, according to ability; yet ever, as we would fain 
persuade ourselves, with charitable intent. Above all, 
that class of ' Logic-choppers, and treble-pipe Scoffers, 
and professed Enemies to Wonder; who, in these days, 
so numerously patrol as night-constables about the Me- 
chanics' Institute of Science, and cackle like true Old- 
Roman geese and goslings round their Capitol, on any 
alarm, or on none; nay who often, as illuminated Skep- 
tics, walk abroad into peaceable society, in full day- 
light, with rattle and lantern, and insist on guiding you 
and guarding you therewith, though the Sun is shining, 
and the street populous with mere justice-loving men': 



60 SARTOR RESARTUS 

that whole class is inexpressibly wearisome to him. Hear 
with what uncommon animation he perorates: 

' The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually 
wonder (and worship), were he President of innumer- 
able Royal Societies, and carried the whole Mecanique 
Celeste and Hegel's Philosophy, and the epitome of all 
Laboratories and Observatories with their results, in his 
single head, — is but a Pair of Spectacles behind which 
there is no Eye. Let those who have Eyes look through 
him, then he may be useful. 

' Thou wilt have no Mystery and Mysticism ; wilt walk 
through thy world by the sunshine of what thou callest 
Truth, or even by the hand-lamp of what I call Attor- 
ney-Logic; and "explain" all, "account" for all, or 
believe nothing of it? Nay, thou wilt attempt laugh- 
ter; whoso recognizes the unfathomable, all-pervading 
domain of Mystery, which is everywhere under our feet 
and among our hands ; to whom the Universe is an Oracle 
and Temple, as well as a Kitchen and Cattle-stall, — 
he shall be a delirious Mystic; to him thou, with snif- 
fing charity, wilt protrusively proffer thy hand-lamp, 
and shriek, as one injured, when he kicks his foot 
through it? — Armer Teufel! Doth not thy cow calve, 
doth not thy bull gender? Thou thyself, wert thou not 
born, wilt thou not die? " Explain " me all this, or do 
one of two things: Retire into private places with thy 
foolish cackle; or, what were better, give it up, and 
weep, not that the reign of wonder is done, and God's 
world all disembellished and prosaic, but that thou hith- 
erto art a Dilettante and sandblind Pedant/ 



PROSPECTIVE 62 

CHAPTER XI 

PROSPECTIVE 

The Philosophy of Clothes is now to all readers, as 
we predicted it would do, unfolding itself into new 
boundless expansions, of a cloudcapt, almost chimerical 
aspect, yet not without azure loomings in the far dis- 
tance, and streaks as of an Elysian brightness; the 
highly questionable purport and promise of which it is 
becoming more and more important for us to ascertain. 
Is that a real Elysian brightness, cries many a timid 
wayfarer, or the reflex of Pandemonian lava? Is it of 
a truth leading us into beatific Asphodel meadows, or the 
yellow-burning marl of a Hell-on-Earth? 

Our Professor, like other Mystics, whether delirious 
or inspired, gives an Editor enough to do. Ever higher 
and dizzier are the heights he leads us to; more pierc- 
ing, all-comprehending, all-confounding are his views 
and glances. For example, this of Nature being not an 
Aggregate but a Whole: 

'Well sang the Hebrew Psalmist: "If I take the 
wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts 
of the universe, God is there." Thou thyself, O culti- 
vated reader, who too probably art no Psalmist, but a 
Prosaist, knowing God only by tradition, knowest thou 
any corner of the world where at least Force is not? 
The drop which thou shakest from thy wet hand, rests 
not where it falls, but to-morrow thou findest it swept 
away; already on the wings of the Northwind, it is near- 
ing the Tropic of Cancer. How came it to evaporate, 
and not lie motionless? Thinkest thou there is ought: 
motionless; without Force, and utterly dead? 

' As I rode through the Schwarzwald, I said to my- 



62 SARTOR RESARTUS 

self: That little fire which glows star-like across the 
dark-growing (nachtende) moor, where the sooty smith 
bends over his anvil, and thou hopest to replace thy lost 
horse-shoe, — is it a detached, separated speck, cut-off 
from the whole Universe; or indissolubly joined to the 
whole? Thou fool, that smithy-fire was (primarily) 
kindled at the Sun; is fed by air that circulates from 
before Noah's Deluge, from beyond the Dogstar; there- 
in, with Iron Force, and Coal Force, and the far 
stranger Force of Man, are cunning affinities and bat- 
tles and victories of Force brought about; it is a little 
ganglion, or nervous center, in the great vital system 
of Immensity. Call it, if thou wilt, an unconscious Al- 
tar, kindled on the bosom of the All; whose iron sac- 
rifice, whose iron smoke and influence reach quite through 
the All; whose dingy Priest, not by word, yet by brain 
and sinew, preaches forth the mystery of Force; nay 
preaches forth (exoterically enough) one little textlet 
from the Gospel of Freedom, the Gospel of Man's Force, 
commanding, and one day to be all-commanding. 

' Detached, separated ! I say there is no such sepa- 
ration: nothing hitherto was ever stranded, cast aside; 
but all, were it only a withered leaf, works together 
with all; is borne forward on the bottomless, shoreless 
flood of Action, and lives through perpetual metamor- 
phoses. The withered leaf is not dead and lost, there 
are Forces in it and around it, though working in in- 
verse order; else how could it rot? Despise not the rag 
from which man makes Paper, or the litter from which 
the earth makes Corn. Rightly viewed no meanest ob- 
ject is insignificant; all objects are as windows, through 
which the philosophic eye looks into Infinitude itself.' 

Again, leaving that wondrous Schwarzwald Smithy- 
Altar, what vacant, high-sailing air-ships are these, and 
whither will they sail with us? 



PROSPECTIVE 6$ 

' All visible things are emblems ; what thou seest is 
not there on its own account; strictly taken, is not there 
at all: Matter exists only spiritually, and to represent 
some Idea, and body it forth. Hence Clothes, as 
despicable as we think them, are so unspeakably sig- 
nificant. Clothes, from the King's mantle downwards, 
are emblematic, nor of want only, but of a manifold 
cunning Victory over Want. On the other hand, all 
Emblematic things are properly Clothes, thought-woven 
or hand- woven: must not the Imagination weave Gar- 
ments, visible Bodies, wherein the else invisible crea- 
tions and inspirations of our Reason are, like Spirits, 
revealed, and first become all-powerful; — the rather if, 
as we often see, the Hand too aid her, and (by wool 
Clothes or otherwise) reveal such even to the outward 
eye? 

' Men are properly said to be clothed with Authority, 
clothed with Beauty, with Curses, and the like. Nay, 
if you consider it, what is Man himself, and his whole 
terrestrial Life, but an Emblem; a Clothing or visible 
Garment for that divine Me of his, cast hither, like a 
light-particle^ down from Heaven? Thus is he said 
also to be clothed with a Body. 

* Language is called the Garment of Thought: how- 
ever, it should rather be, Language is the Flesh-Garment, 
the Body, of Thought. I said that Imagination wove 
this Flesh-Garment; and does not she? Metaphors are 
her stuff: examine Language; what, if you except some 
few primitive elements (of natural sound), what is it all 
but Metaphors, recognized as such, or no longer recog- 
nized; still fluid and florid, or now solid-grown and col- 
orless? If those same primitive elements are the os- 
seous fixtures in the Flesh-Garment, Language, — then 
are Metaphors its muscles and tissues and living integu- 
ments. An unmetaphorical style you shall in vain seek 



64 SARTOR RESARTUS 

for: is not your very Attention sl Stretching-to? The 
difference lies here: some styles are lean, adust, wiry, 
the muscle itself seems osseous; some are even quite 
pallid, hunger-bitten and dead-looking; while others 
again glow in the flush of health and vigorous self- 
growth, sometimes (as in my own case) not without an 
apoplectic tendency. Moreover, there are sham Meta- 
phors, which overhanging that same Thought's-Body 
(best naked), and deceptively bedizening, or bolstering 
it out, may be called its false stuffings, superfluous show- 
cloaks (Puts-Mantel) , and tawdry woolen rags: where- 
of he that runs and reads may gather whole hampers, 
— and burn them/ 

Than which paragraph on Metaphors did the reader 
ever chance to see a more surprisingly metaphorical? 
However, that is not our chief grievance; the Professor 
continues : 

' Why multiply instances ? It is written, the Heav- 
ens and the Earth shall fade away like a Vesture ; which 
indeed they are : the Time-vesture of the Eternal. What- 
soever sensibly exists, whatsoever represents Spirit to 
Spirit, is properly a Clothing, a suit of Raiment, put 
on for a season, and to be laid off. Thus in this one 
pregnant subject of Clothes, rightly understood, is in- 
cluded all that men have thought, dreamed, done, and 
been: the whole External Universe and what it holds is 
but Clothing; and the essence of all Science lies in the 
Philosophy of Clothes.' 

Towards these dim infinitely-expanded regions, close- 
bordering on the impalpable Inane, it is not without ap- 
prehension, and perpetual difficulties, that the Editor 
sees himself journeying and struggling. Till lately a 
cheerful daystar of hope hung before him, in the ex- 
pected Aid of Hofrath Heuschrecke; which daystar, 
however, melts now, not into the red of morning, but 



PROSPECTIVE 65 

into a vague, gray half-light, uncertain whether dawn 
of day or dusk of utter darkness. For the last week, 
these so-called Biographical Documents are in his hand. 
By the kindness of a Scottish Hamburg Merchant, whose 
name, known to the whole mercantile world, he must 
not mention; but whose honorable courtesy, now and 
often before spontaneously manifested to him, a mere 
literary stranger, he cannot soon forget, — the bulky 
Weissnichtwo Packet, with all its Customhouse seals, 
foreign hieroglyphs, and miscellaneous tokens of Travel, 
arrived here in perfect safety, and free of cost. The 
reader shall now fancy with what hot haste it was broken 
up, with what breathless expectation glanced o^er; and, 
alas, with what unquiet disappointment it has, since then, 
been often thrown down, and again taken up. 

Hofrath Heuschrecke, in a too long-winded Letter, 
full of compliments, Weissnichtwo politics, dinners, din- 
ing repartees, and other ephemeral trivialities, proceeds 
to remind us of what we knew well already: that how- 
ever it may be with Metaphysics, and other abstract 
Science originating in the Head (Verstand) alone, no 
Life-Philosophy (Lebensphilosophie), such as this of 
Clothes pretends to be, which originates equally in the 
Character (Gemiith), and equally speaks thereto, can 
attain its significance till the Character itself is known 
and seen; ' till the Author's View of the World {Weltan- 
sicht), and how he actively and passively came by such 
view, are clear: in short till a Biography of him has 
been philosophico-poetically written, and philosophico- 
poetically read.' ' Nay/ adds he, * were the speculative 
scientific Truth even known, you still, in this inquiring 
age, ask yourself, Whence came it, and Why, and How? 
— and rest not, till, if no better may be, Fancy have 
shaped-out an answer; and either in the authentic linea- 
ments of Fact, or the forged ones of Fiction, a complete 



66 SARTOR RESARTUS 

picture and Genetical History of the Man and his spir- 
itual Endeavor lies before you. But why/ says the 
Hofrath, and indeed say we, ' do I dilate on the uses 
of our Teufelsdrockh's Biography? The great Herr 
Minister von Goethe has penetratingly remarked that 
" Man is properly the only object that interests man ": 
thus I too have noted, that in Weissnichtwo our whole 
conversation is little or nothing else but Biography or 
Auto-Biography; ever humano-anecdotical (menschlich- 
aneJcdotisch) . Biography is by nature the most univer- 
sally profitable, universally pleasant of all things: es- 
pecially Biography of distinguished individuals. 

' By this time, mein Verehrtester (my Most Es- 
teemed),' continues he, with an eloquence which, unless 
the words be purloined from Teufelsdrockh, or some 
trick of his, as we suspect, is well-nigh unaccountable, 
' by this time you are fairly plunged (vertieft) in that 
mighty forest of Clothes-Philosophy ; and looking round, 
as all readers do, with astonishment enough. Such por- 
tions and passages as you have already mastered, and 
brought to paper, could not but awaken a strange curi- 
osity touching the mind they issued from; the perhaps 
unparalleled psychical mechanism, which manufactured 
such matter, and emitted it to the light of day. Had 
Teufelsdrockh also a father and mother; did he, at one 
time, wear drivel-bibs, and live on spoon-meat? Did he 
ever, in rapture and tears, clasp a friend's bosom to 
his; looks he also wistfully into the long burial-aisle 
of the Past, where only winds, and their low harsh moan, 
give inarticulate answer? Has he fought duels; — good 
Heaven! how did he comport himself when in Love? 
By what singular stair-steps, in short, and subterranean 
passages, and sloughs of Despair, and steep Pisgah hills, 
has he reached this wonderful prophetic Hebron (a true 
Old-Clothes Jewry) where he now dwells? 



PROSPECTIVE 67 

'To all these natural questions the voice of public 
History is as yet silent. Certain only that he has been, 
and is, a Pilgrim, and a Traveler from a far Country; 
more or less footsore and travel-soiled; has parted with 
road-companions; fallen among thieves, been poisoned 
by bad cookery, blistered with bugbites; nevertheless, 
at every stage (for they have let him pass), has had the 
Bill to discharge. But the whole particulars of 
his Route, his Weather-observations, the picturesque 
Sketches he took, though all regularly jotted down (in 
indelible sympathetic-ink by an invisible interior Pen- 
man), are these nowhere forthcoming? Perhaps quite 
lost: one other leaf of thft mighty Volume (of human 
Memory) left to fly abroad, unprinted, unpublished, un- 
bound up, as waste paper; and to rot, the sport of 
rainy winds? 

' No, verehrtester Herr Herausgeber, in no wise ! I 
here, by the unexampled favor you stand in with our 
Sage, send not a Biograph- only, but an Autobiography: 
at least the materials for such; wherefrom, if I mis- 
reckon not, your perspicacity will draw fullest insight: 
and so the whole Philosophy and Philosopher of Clothes 
will stand clear to the wondering eyes of England, nay 
thence, through America, through Hindostan, and the 
antipodal New Holland, finally conquer (einnehmen) 
great part of this terrestrial Planet ! ' 

And now let the sympathizing reader judge of our 
feeling when, in place of this same Autobiography with 
' fullest insight,' we find— Six considerable Paper-Bags, 
carefully sealed, and marked successively, in gilt China- 
ink, with the symbols of the Six southern Zodiacal Signs, 
beginning at Libra; in the inside of which sealed Bags 
lie miscellaneous masses of Sheets, and oftener Shreds 
and Snips, written in Professor Teufelsdrockh's scarce 
legible cursiv-schrift; and treating of all imaginable 



68 SARTOR RESARTUS 

things under the Zodiac and above it, but of his own 
personal history only at rare intervals, and then in the 
most enigmatic manner. 

Whole fascicles there are, wherein the Professor, or, 
as he here, speaking in the third person, calls himself, 
' the Wanderer,' is not once named. Then again, amidst 
what seems to be a Metaphysico-theological Disquisition, 
' Detached Thoughts on the Steam-engine/ or, * The 
continued Possibility of Prophecy,' we shall meet with 
some quite private, not unimportant Biographical fact. 
On certain sheets stand Dreams, authentic or not, while 
the circumjacent waking Actions are omitted. Anec- 
dotes, oftenest without date of place or time, fly loosely 
on separate slips, like Sibylline leaves. Interspersed 
also are long purely Autobiographical delineations; yet 
without connection, without recognizable coherence; so 
unimportant, so superfluously minute, they almost re- 
mind us of * P.P. Clerk of this Parish.' Thus does 
famine of intelligence alternate with waste. Selection, 
order, appears to be unknown to the Professor. In 
all Bags the same imbroglio; only perhaps in the Bag 
Capricorn, and those near it, the confusion a little worse 
confounded. Close by a rather eloquent Oration, ' On 
receiving the Doctor's-Hat,' lie wash-bills, marked 
bezahlt (settled). His Travels are indicated by the 
Street-Advertisements of the various cities he has vis- 
ited; of which Street- Advertisements, in most living 
tongues, here is perhaps the completest collection ex- 
tant. 

So that if the Clothes-Volume itself was too like a 
Chaos, we have now instead of the solar Luminary that 
should still it, the airy Limbo which by intermixture will 
farther volatilize and discompose it! As we shall per- 
haps see it our duty ultimately to deposit these Six 
Paper-Bags in the British Museum, farther description, 



PROSPECTIVE 69 

and all vituperation of them, may be spared. Biography 
or Autobiography of Teufelsdrockh there is, clearly 
enough, none to be gleaned here: at most some sketchy, 
shadowy fugitive likeness of him may, by unheard-of 
efforts, partly of intellect, partly of imagination, on the 
side of Editor and of Reader, rise up between them. 
Only as a gaseous-chaotic Appendix to that aqueous- 
chaotic Volume can the contents of the Six Bags hover 
round us, and portions thereof be incorporated with our 
delineation of it. 

Daily and nightly does the Editor sit (with green 
spectacles) deciphering these unimaginable Documents 
from their perplexed cursiv-schrift; collating them with 
the almost equally unimaginable Volume, which stands 
in legible print. Over such a universal medley of high 
and low, of hot, cold, moist and dry, is he here strug- 
gling (by union of like with like, which is Method) to 
build a firm Bridge for British travelers. Never per- 
haps since our first Bridge-builders, Sin and Death, built 
that stupendous Arch from Hell-gate to the Earth, did 
any Pontifex, or Pontiff, undertake such a task as the 
present Editor. For in this Arch too, leading, as we 
humbly presume, far otherwards than that grand 
primeval one, the materials are to be fished-up from 
the weltering deep, and down from the simmering air, 
here one mass, there another, and cunningly cemented, 
while the elements boil beneath: nor is there any super- 
natural force to do it with ; but simply the Diligence and 
feeble thinking Faculty of an English Editor, endeav- 
oring to evolve printed Creation out of a German printed 
and written Chaos, wherein, as he shoots to and fro in 
it, gathering, clutching, piecing the Why to the far- 
distant Wherefore, his whole Faculty and Self are like 
to be swallowed up. 

Patiently, under these incessant toils and agitations, 



70 SARTOR RESARTUS 

does the Editor, dismissing all anger, see his otherwise 
robust health declining; some fraction of his allotted 
natural sleep nightly leaving him, and little but an in- 
flamed nervous-system to be looked for. What is the 
use of health, or of life, if not to do some work there- 
with? And what work nobler than transplanting for- 
eign Thought into the barren domestic soil; except in- 
deed planting Thought of your own, which the fewest 
are privileged to do? Wild as it looks, this Philosophy 
of Clothes, can we ever reach its real meaning, promises 
to reveal new-coming Eras, the first dim rudiments and 
already-budding germs of a nobler Era, in Universal 
History. Is not such a prize worth some striving? For- 
ward with us, courageous reader; be it towards failure, 
or towards success ! The latter thou sharest with us ; 
the former also is not all our own. 



BOOK SECOND 



CHAPTER I 



GENESIS 



In a psychological point of view, it is perhaps ques- 
tionable whether from birth and genealogy, how closely 
scrutinized soever, much insight is to be gained. Never- 
theless, as in every phenomenon the Beginning remains 
always the most notable moment; so, with regard to 
any great man, we rest not till, for our scientific profit 
or not, the whole circumstances of his first appearance 
in this Planet, and what manner of Public Entry he 
made, are with utmost completeness rendered manifest. 
To the Genesis of our Clothes-Philosopher, then, be this 
First Chapter consecrated. Unhappily, indeed, he seems 
to be of quite obscure extraction; uncertain, we might 
almost say, whether of any: so that this Genesis of his 
can properly be nothing but an Exodus (or transit out 
of Invisibility into Visibility) ; whereof the preliminary 
portion is nowhere forthcoming. 

' In the village of Entepfuhl/ thus writes he, in the 
Bag Libra, on various Papers, which we arrange with 
difficulty, * dwelt Andreas Futteral and his wife ; child- 
less, in still seclusion, and cheerful though now verging 
towards old age. Andreas had been grenadier Ser- 
geant, and even regimental Schoolmaster under Freder- 

71 



72 SARTOR RESARTUS 

ick the Great; but now, quitting the halbert and ferule 
for the spade and pruning-hook, cultivated a little 
Orchard, on the produce of which he, Cincinnatus-like, 
lived not without dignity. Fruits, the peach, the apple, 
the grape, with other varieties came in their season; all 
which Andreas knew how to sell : on evenings he 
smoked largely, or read (as beseemed a regimental 
Schoolmaster), and talked to neighbors that would lis- 
ten about the Victory of Rossbach; and how Fritz the 
Only (der Einzige) had once with his own royal lips 
spoken to him, had been pleased to say, when Andreas 
as camp-sentinel demanded the pass-word, " Schweig 
Hund (Peace, hound) !" before any of his staff-adjutants 
could answer. " Dass nenn* ich mir einen Konig (There 
is what I call a King)," would Andreas exclaim: "but 
the smoke of Kunersdorf was still smarting his eyes." 
' Gretchen, the housewife, won like Desdemona by 
the deeds rather than the looks of her now veteran 
Othello, lived not in altogether military subordination; 
for, as Andreas said, " the womankind will not drill 
{wer hann die Weiberchen dressiren) : nevertheless she 
at heart loved him both for valor and wisdom; to her a 
Prussian grenadier Sergeant and Regiment's School- 
master was little other than a Cicero and Cid: what you 
see, yet cannot see over, is as good as infinite. Nay, was 
not Andreas in very deed a man of order, courage, down- 
rightness (Geradheit) ; that understood Biisehing's Geog- 
raphy, had been in the victory of Rossbach, and left 
for dead in the camisade of Hochkirch? The good 
Gretchen, for all her fretting, watched over him and 
hovered round him as only a true housemother can: 
assiduously she cooked and sewed and scoured for him; 
so that not only his old regimental sword and grenadier- 
cap, but the whole habitation and environment, where 
on pegs of honor they hung, looked ever trim and gay: a 



GENESIS 73 

roomy painted Cottage, embowered in fruit-trees and 
forest-trees, evergreens and honeysuckles; rising many- 
colored from amid shaven grass-plots, flowers struggling- 
in through the very windows; under its long projecting 
eaves nothing but garden-tools in methodic piles (to 
screen them from rain), and seats where, especially on 
summer nights, a King might have wished to sit and 
smoke, and call it his. Such a Bauergut (Copyhold) 
had Gretchen given her veteran; whose sinewy arms, 
and long-disused gardening talent, had made it what 
you saw. 

' Into this umbrageous Man's-nest, one meek yellow 
evening or dusk, when the Sun, hidden indeed from 
terrestrial Entepfuhl, did nevertheless journey visible 
and radiant along the celestial Balance {Libra), it was 
that a Stranger of reverend aspect entered; and, with 
grave salutation, stood before the two rather astonished 
housemates. He was close-muffled in a wide mantle; 
which without farther parley unfolding, he deposited 
therefrom what seemed some Basket, overhung with 
green Persian silk; saying only: Ihr lieben Leuie, hier 
bringe ein unschatzbares Verleihen; nehmt es in alter 
Acht, sorgfaltigst beniitzt es: mit hohem Lohn, oder wohl 
mit schweren Zinsen, wird's einst zuriickgefordert. 
" Good Christian people, here lies for you an invaluable 
Loan; take all heed thereof, in all carefulness employ 
it: with high recompense, or else with heavy penalty, 
will it one day be required back." Uttering which sin- 
gular words, in a clear, bell-like, forever memorable 
tone, the Stranger gracefully withdrew; and before 
Andreas or his wife, gazing in expectant wonder, had 
time to fashion either question or answer, was clean 
gone. Neither out of doors could aught of him be seen 
or heard; he had vanished in the thickets, in the dusk; 
the Orchard-gate stood quietly closed: the Stranger was 



74 SARTOR RESARTUS 

gone once and always. So sudden had the whole 
transaction been, in the autumn stillness and twilight, 
so gentle, noiseless, that the Futterals could have fan- 
cied it all a trick of Imagination, or some visit from an 
authentic Spirit. Only that the green-silk Basket, such 
as neither Imagination nor authentic Spirits are wont 
to carry, still stood visible and tangible on their little 
parlor-table. Towards this the astonished couple, now 
with lit candle, hastily turned their attention. Lifting 
the green veil, to see what invaluable it hid, they 
descried there, amid down and rich white wrappages, 
no Pitt Diamond or Hapsburg Regalia, but, in the soft- 
est sleep, a little red-colored Infant ! Beside it, lay 
a roll of gold Friedrichs, the exact amount of which 
was never publicly known; also a Taufschein (bap- 
tismal certificate), wherein unfortunately nothing but 
the Name was decipherable; other document or indica- 
tion none whatever. 

' To wonder and conjecture was unavailing, then and 
always thenceforth. Nowhere in Entepfuhl, on the 
morrow or next day, did tidings transpire of any such 
figure as the Stranger; nor could the Traveler, who 
had passed through the neighboring Town in coach-and- 
four, be connected with this Apparition, except in the 
way of gratuitous surmise. Meanwhile, for Andreas 
and his wife, the grand practical problem was: What 
to do with this little sleeping red-colored Infant ? Amid 
amazements and curiosities, which had to die away 
without external satisfying, they resolved, as in such 
circumstances charitable prudent people needs must, 
on nursing it, though with spoon-meat, into whiteness, 
and if possible into manhood. The Heavens smiled on 
their endeavor: thus has that same mysterious Individ- 
ual ever since had a status for himself in this visible 
Universe, some modicum of victual and lodging and 



GENESIS 75 

parade-ground; and now expanded in bulk, faculty and 
knowledge of good and evil, he, as Herr Diogenes 
Teufelsdrockh, professes or is ready to profess, per- 
haps not altogether without effect, in the New Univer- 
sity of Weissnichtwo, the new Science of Things in 
General.' 

Our Philosopher declares here, as indeed we should 
think he well might, that these facts, first communicated, 
by the good Gretchen Futteral, in his twelfth year, ' pro- 
duced on the boyish heart and fancy a quite indelible 
impression. Who this reverend Personage/ he says, 
' that glided into the Orchard Cottage when the Sun 
was in Libra, and then, as on spirit's wings, glided out 
again, might be? An inexpressible desire, full of love 
and of sadness, has often since struggled within me 
to shape an answer. Ever, in my distresses and my 
loneliness, has Fantasy turned, full of longing (sehn- 
suchtsvoW) , to that unknown Father, who perhaps far 
from me, perhaps near, either way invisible, might have 
taken me to his paternal bosom, there to lie screened 
from many a woe. Thou beloved Father, dost thou still, 
shut out from me only by thin penetrable curtains of 
earthly Space, wend to and fro among the crowd of the 
living? Or art thou hidden by those far thicker cur- 
tains of the Everlasting Night, or rather of the Ever- 
lasting Day, through which my mortal eye and out- 
stretched arms need not strive to reach? Alas, I know 
not, and in vain vex myself to know. More than once, 
heart-deluded, have I taken for thee this and the other 
noble-looking Stranger; and approached him wistfully, 
with infinite regard; but he too had to repel me, he too 
was not thou. 

' And yet, O Man born of Woman,' cries the Auto- 
biographer, with one of his sudden whirls, ' wherein is 
my case peculiar? Hadst thou, any more than I, a 



76 SARTOR RESARTUS 

Father whom thou knowest? The Andreas and 
Gretchen, or the Adam and Eve, who led thee into Life, 
and for a time suckled and pap-fed thee there, whom 
thou namest Father and Mother; these were, like mine, 
but thy nursing-father and nursing-mother: thy true 
Beginning and Father is in Heaven, whom with the 
bodily eye thou shalt never behold, but only with the 
spiritual.' 

' The little green veil/ adds he, among much similar 
moralizing, and embroiled discoursing, ■ I yet keep; 
still more inseparably the Name, Diogenes Teufels- 
drockh. From the veil can nothing be inferred: a piece 
of now quite faded Persian silk, like thousands of 
others. On the Name I have many times meditated and 
conjectured; but neither in this lay there any clue. 
That it was my unknown Father's name I must hesi- 
tate to believe. To no purpose have I searched through 
all the Herald's Books, in and without the German Em- 
pire, and through all manner of Subscriber-Lists 
(Pranumeranten) , Militia-Rolls, and other Name- 
catalogues; extraordinary names as we have in Ger- 
many, the name Teufelsdrockh, except as appended to 
my own person, nowhere occurs. Again, what may the 
unchristian rather than Christian "Diogenes" mean? 
Did that reverend Basket-bearer intend, by such desig- 
nation, to shadow-forth my future destiny, or his own 
present malign humor? Perhaps the latteT, perhaps 
both. Thou ill-starred Parent, who like an Ostrich 
hadst to leave thy ill-starred offspring to be hatched 
into self-support by the mere sky-influences of Chance, 
can thy pilgrimage have been a smooth one? Beset by 
Misfortune thou doubtless hast been; or indeed by the 
worst figure of Misfortune, by Misconduct. Often have 
I fancied how, in thy hard life-battle, thou wert shot 
at, and slung at, wounded, hand-fettered, hamstrung, 



GENESIS 77 

browbeaten and bedeviled by the Time-Spirit (Zeit- 
geist) in thyself and others, till the good soul first given 
thee was seared into grim rage; and thou hadst nothing 
for it but to leave in me an indignant appeal to the Fu- 
ture, and living speaking Protest against the Devil, as 
that same Spirit not of the Time only, but of Time itself, 
is well named ! Which Appeal and Protest, may I now 
modestly add, was not perhaps quite lost in air. 

' For indeed, as Walter Shandy often insisted, there 
is much, nay almost all, in Names. The Name is the 
earliest Garment you wrap round the earth-visiting 
Me; to which it thenceforth cleaves, more tenaciously 
(for there are Names that have lasted nigh thirty cen- 
turies) than the very skin. And now from without, 
what mystic influences does it not send inwards, even 
to the center; especially in those plastic first-times, 
when the whole soul is yet infantine, soft, and the in- 
visible seedgrain will grow to be an all overshadowing 
tree! Names? Could I unfold the influence of Names, 
which are the most important of all Clothings, I were 
a second greater Trismegistus. Not only all common 
Speech, but Science, Poetry itself is no other, if thou 
consider it, than a right Naming. Adam's first task was 
giving names to natural Appearances: what is ours still 
but a continuation of the same; be the Appearances 
exotic-vegetable, organic, mechanic, stars, or starry 
movements (as in Science) ; or (as in Poetry) pas- 
sions, virtues, calamities, God-attributes, Gods? — In a 
very plain sense the Proverb says, Call one a thief, and 
he will steal; in an almost similar sense may we not per- 
haps say, Call one Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, and he will 
open the Philosophy of Clothes? ' 

' Meanwhile the incipient Diogenes, like others, all ig- 
norant of his Why, his How or Whereabout, was open- 



78 SARTOR RESARTUS 

ing his eyes to the kind Light; sprawling-out his ten 
fingers and toes; listening, tasting, feeling; in a word, 
by all his Five Senses, still more by his Sixth Sense 
of Hunger, and a whole infinitude of inward, spiritual, 
half-awakened Senses, endeavoring daily to acquire for 
himself some knowledge of this strange Universe where 
he had arrived, be his task therein what it might. In- 
finite was his progress; thus in some fifteen months, he 
could perform the miracle of — Speech! To breed a 
fresh Soul, is it not like brooding a fresh (celestial) 
Egg; wherein as yet all is formless, powerless; yet by 
degrees organic elements and fibers shoot through the 
watery albumen; and out of vague Sensation grows 
Thought, grows Fantasy and Force, and we have Phi- 
losophies, Dynasties, nay Poetries and Religions ! 

' Young Diogenes, or rather young Gneschen, for by 
such diminutive had they in their fondness named him, 
traveled forward to those high consummations, by quick 
yet easy stages. The Futterals, to avoid vain talk, and 
moreover keep the roll of gold Friedrichs safe, gave-out 
that he was a grand-nephew; the orphan of some sis- 
ter's daughter, suddenly deceased, in Andreas's distant 
Prussian birthland; of whom, as of her indigent sor- 
rowing widower, little enough was known at Entepfuhl. 
Heedless of all which, the Nurseling took to his spoon- 
meat, and throve. I have heard him noted as a still 
infant, that kept his mind much to himself; above all, 
that seldom or never cried. He already felt that time 
was precious; that he had other work cut-out for him 
than whimpering.' 

Such, after utmost painful search and collation 
among these miscellaneous Paper-masses, is all the no- 
tice we can gather of Herr Teufelsdrockh's genealogy. 
More imperfect, more enigmatic it can seem to few 
readers than to us. The Professor, in whom truly we 



IDYLLIC 79 

more and more discern a certain satirical turn, and deep 
under-currents of roguish whim, for the present stands 
pledged in honor, so we will not doubt him: but seems 
it not conceivable that, by the ' good Gretchen Futteral/ 
or some other perhaps interested party, he has himself 
been deceived? Should these sheets, translated or not, 
ever reach the Entepfuhl Circulating Library, some cul- 
tivated native of that district might feel called to afford 
explanation. Nay, since Books, like invisible scouts, 
permeate the whole habitable globe, and Timbuctoo it- 
self is not safe from British Literature, may not some 
Copy find out even the mysterious basket-bearing 
Stranger, who in a state of extreme senility perhaps 
still exists; and gently force even him to disclose him- 
self; to claim openly a son, in whom any father may 
feel pride? 



CHAPTER II 

IDYLLIC 

- Happy sreason of childhood ! ' exclaims Teuf els- 
drbckh : ' Kind Nature, that art to all a bountiful 
mother; that visitest the poor man's hut with auroral 
radiance; and for thy Nurseling hast provided a soft 
swathing of Love and infinite Hope, wherein Le waxes 
and slumbers, danced-round {umgaukeli) by sweetest 
Dreams ! If the paternal Cottage still shuts us in, its 
roof still screens us; with a Father we have as yet a 
prophet, priest and king, and an Obedience that makes 
us free. The young spirit has awakened out of Eter- 
nity, and knows not what we mean by Time; as yet 
Time is no fast-hurrying stream, but a sportful sunlit 
ocean; years to the child are as ages: ah! the secret 



80 SARTOR RESARTUS 

of Vicissitude, of that slower or quicker decay and cease- 
less down-rushing of the universal World-fabric, from 
the granite mountain to the man or day-moth, is yet 
unknown; and in a motionless Universe, we taste, what 
afterwards in this quick-whirling Universe, is forever 
denied us, the balm of Rest. Sleep on, thou fair Child, 
for thy long rough journey is at hand! A little while, 
and thou too shalt sleep no more, but thy very dreams 
shall be mimic battles; thou too, with old Arnauld, wilt 
have to say in stern patience: "Rest? Rest? Shall I 
not have all Eternity to rest in ? " Celestial Nepenthe ! 
though a Pyrrhus conquer empires, and an Alexander 
sack the world, he finds thee not; and thou hast once 
fallen gently, of thy own accord, on the eyelids, on 
the heart of every mother's child. For as yet, sleep 
and waking are one: the fair Life-garden rustles in- 
finite around, and everywhere is dewy fragrance, and 
the budding of Hope; which budding, if in youth, too 
frostnipt, it grow to flowers, will in manhood yield no 
fruit, but a prickly, bitter-rinded stone-fruit, of which 
the fewest can find the kernel/ 

In such rose-colored light does our Professor, as 
Poets are wont, look back on his childhood ; the historical 
details of which (to say nothing of much other vague 
oratorical matter) he accordingly dwells on with an 
almost wearisome minuteness. We hear of Entepfuhl 
standing ' in trustful derangement ' among the woody 
slopes; the paternal Orchard flanking it as extreme out- 
post from below; the little Kuhbach gushing kindly by, 
among beech-rows, through river after river, into the 
Donau, into the Black Sea, into the Atmosphere and 
Universe ; and how ' the brave old Linden,' stretching 
like a parasol of twenty ells in radius, overtopping all 
other rows and clumps, towered-up from the central 
Agora and Campus Martius of the Village, like its Sa- 



IDYLLIC 81 

cred Tree; and how the old men sat talking under its 
shadow (Gneschen often greedily listening), and the 
wearied laborers reclined, and the unwearied children 
sported, and the young men and maidens often danced 
to flute-music. ' Glorious summer twilights,' cries 
Teuf elsdrockh, -Awhen the Sun, like a proud Conqueror 
and Imperial Taskmaster, turned his back, with his 
gold-purple emblazonry, and all his fireclad body-guard 
(of Prismatic Colors) ; and the tired brickmakers of this 
clay Earth might steal a little frolic, and those few 
meek Stars would not tell of them ! ' 

Then we have long details of the Weinlesen (Vin- 
tage), the Harvest-Home, Christmas, and so forth; with 
a whole cycle of the Entepfuhl Children's-games, dif- 
fering apparently by mere superficial shades from those 
of other countries. Concerning all which, we shall 
here, for obvious reasons, say nothing. What cares the 
world for our as yet miniature Philosopher's achieve- 
ments under that ' brave old Linden ' ? Or even where 
is the use of such practical reflections as the following? 
' In all the sports of Children, were it only in their 
wanton breakages and defacements, you shall discern 
a creative instinct (schaffenden Trieb) : the Mankin 
feels that he is a born Man, that his vocation is to work. 
The choicest present you can make him is a Tool; be 
it knife or pen-gun, for construction or for destruction; 
either way it is for Work, for Change. In gregarious 
sports of skill or strength, the boy trains himself to Co- 
operation, for war or peace, as governor or governed: 
the little Maid again, provident of her domestic des- 
tiny, takes with preference to Dolls.' 

Perhaps, however, we may give this anecdote, con- 
sidering who it is that relates it: ' My first short-clothes 
were of yellow serge; or rather, I should say, my 
first short-cloth, for the vesture was one and indivisible, 



82 SARTOR RESARTUS 

reaching from neck to ankle, a mere body with four 
limbs: of which fashion how little could I then divine 
the architectural, how much less the moral significance ! ' 

More graceful is the following little picture: ' On 
fine evenings I was wont to carry-forth my supper 
(bread-crumb boiled in milk), and eat it out-of-doors. 
On the coping of the Orchard-wall, which I could reach 
by climbing, or still more easily if Father Andreas would 
set-up the pruning-ladder, my porringer was placed: 
there, many a sunset, have I, looking at the distant 
western Mountains, consumed, not without relish, my 
evening meal. Those hues of gold and azure, that hush 
of World's expectation as Day died, were still a He- 
brew Speech for me; nevertheless I was looking at the 
fair illuminated Letters, and had an eye for their gild- 
ing/ 

With ' the little one's friendship for cattle and poul- 
try ' we .shall not much intermeddle. It may be that 
hereby he acquired a ' certain deeper sympathy with 
animated Nature'; but when, we would ask, saw any 
man, in a collection of Biographical Documents, such a 
piece as this: 'Impressive enough (bedeutungsvoll) 
was it to hear, in early morning, the Swineherd's horn; 
and know that so many hungry happy quadrupeds were, 
on all sides, starting in hot haste to join him, for break- 
fast on the Heath. Or to see them at eventide, all 
marching-in again, with short squeak, almost in mili- 
tary order; and each, topographically correct, trotting- 
off in succession to the right or left, through its own 
lane, to its own dwelling; till old Kunz, at the Vil- 
lage-head, now left alone, blew his last blast, and re- 
tired for the night. We are wont to love the Hog chiefly 
in the form of Ham; yet did not these bristly thick- 
skinned beings here manifest intelligence, perhaps hu- 
mor of character; at any rate, a touching, trustful sub- 



IDYLLIC 83 

missiveness to Man, — who, were he but a Swineherd, 
in darned gabardine, and leather breeches more resem- 
bling slate or discolored-tin breeches, is still the 
Hierarch of this lower world? " 

It is maintained, by Helvetius and his set, that an 
infant of genius is quite the same as any other infant, 
only that certain surprisingly favorable influences ac- 
company him through life, especially through child- 
hood, and expand him, while others lie closefolded and 
continue dunces. Herein, say they, consists the whole 
difference between an inspired Prophet and a double- 
barreled Game-preserver: the inner man of the one has 
been fostered into generous development; that of the 
other, crushed-down perhaps by vigor of animal diges- 
tion, and the like, has exuded and evaporated, or at 
best sleeps now irresuscitably stagnant at the bottom 
of his stomach. ' With which opinion/ cries Teufels- 
drockh, ' I should as soon agree as with this other, that 
an acorn might, by favorable or unfavorable influences 
of soil and climate, be nursed into a cabbage, or the 
cabbage-seed into an oak. 

' Nevertheless/ continues he, ' I too acknowledge the 
ail-but omnipotence of early culture and nurture : hereby 
we have either a doddered dwarf bush, or a high-tower- 
ing, wide-shadowing tree; either a sick yellow cabbage, 
or an edible luxuriant green one. Of a truth, it is the 
duty of all men, especially of all philosophers, to note- 
down with accuracy the characteristic circumstances 
of their Education, what furthered, what hindered, what 
in any way modified it: to which duty, nowadays so 
pressing for many a German Autobiographer, I also 
zealously address myself.' — Thou rogue ! Is it by short- 
clothes of yellow serge, and swineherd horns, that an 
infant of genius is educated? And yet, as usual, it ever 
remains doubtful whether he is laughing in his sleeve 



84 SARTOR RESARTUS 

at these Autobiographical times of ours, or writing from 
the abundance of his own fond ineptitude. For he 
continues: 'If among the ever-streaming currents of 
Sights, Hearings, Feelings for Pain or Pleasure, where- 
by, as in a Magic Hall, young Gneschen went about 
environed, I might venture to select and specify, per- 
haps these following were also of the number: 

' Doubtless, as childish sports call forth Intellect, 
Activity, so the young creature's Imagination was stirred 
up, and a Historical tendency given him by the narra- 
tive habits of Father Andreas; who, with his battle- 
reminiscences, and gray austere yet hearty patriarchal 
aspect, could not but appear another Ulysses and 
" much-enduring Man." Eagerly I hung upon his tales, 
when listening neighbors enlivened the hearth; from 
these perils and these travels, wild and far almost as 
Hades itself, a dim world of Adventure expanded it- 
self within me. Incalculable also was the knowledge I 
acquired in standing by the Old Men under the Linden- 
tree: the whole of Immensity was yet new to me; and 
had not these reverend seniors, talkative enough, been 
employed in partial surveys thereof for nigh fourscore 
years? With amazement I began to discover that En- 
tepfuhl stood in the middle of a Country, of a World; 
that there was such a thing as History, as Biography; 
to which I also, one day, by hand and tongue, might 
contribute. 

' In a like sense worked the Postwagen (Stage- 
coach), which, slow-rolling under its mountains of men 
and luggage, wended through our Village: northwards, 
truly, in the dead of night; yet southwards visibly at 
eventide. Not till my eighth year did I reflect that 
this Postwagen could be other than some terrestrial 
Moon, rising and setting by mere Law of Nature, like 
the heavenly one; that it came on made highways, from 



IDYLLIC 85 

far cities towards far cities; weaving them like a mon- 
strous shuttle into closer and closer union. It was 
then that, independently of Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, I 
made this not quite insignificant reflection (so true also 
in spiritual things) : Any road, this simple Entepfuhl 
road, will lead you to the end of the World! 

' Why mention our Swallows, which, out of far Africa, 
as I learned, threading their way over seas and moun- 
tains, corporate cities and belligerent nations, yearly 
found themselves, with the month of May, snug-lodged 
in our Cottage Lobby? The hospitable Father (for 
cleanliness' sake) had fixed a little bracket plumb under 
their nest: there they built, and caught flies, and twit- 
tered, and bred; and all, I chiefly, from the heart loved 
them. Bright, nimble creatures, who taught you the 
mason-craft; nay, stranger still, gave you a masonic 
incorporation, almost social police? For if, by ill 
chance, and when time pressed, your House fell, have 
I not seen five neighborly Helpers appear next day; 
and swashing to and fro, with animated, loud, long- 
drawn chirpings, and activity almost super-hirundine, 
complete it again before nightfall? 

' But undoubtedly the grand summary of Entepfuhl 
child's-culture, where as in a funnel its manifold in- 
fluences were concentrated and simultaneously poured- 
down on us, was the annual Cattle-fair. Here, assem- 
bling from all the four winds, came the elements of an 
unspeakable hurlyburly. Nutbrown maids and nut- 
brown men, all clear-washed, loud-laughing, bedizened 
and beribanded; who came for dancing, for treating, 
and if possible, for happiness. Topbooted Graziers 
from the North; Swiss Brokers, Italian Drovers, also 
topbooted, from the South; these with their subalterns 
in leather jerkins, leather skull-caps, and long oxgoads; 
shouting in half-articulate speech, amid the inarticulate 



86 SARTOR RESARTUS 

barking and bellowing. Apart stood Potters from far 
Saxony, with their crockery in fair rows; Nurnberg 
Pedlers, in booths that to me seemed richer than Ormuz 
bazaars; Showmen from the Lago Maggiore; detach- 
ments of the Wiener Schub (Offscourings of Vienna) 
vociferously superintending games of chance. Ballad- 
singers brayed, Auctioneers grew hoarse; cheap New 
Wine (heuriger) flowed like water, still worse con- 
founding the confusion; and high over all, vaulted, in 
ground-and-lofty tumbling, a particolored Merry-An- 
drew, like the genius of the place and of Life itself. 

' Thus encircled by the mystery of Existence; under 
the deep heavenly Firmament; waited-on by the four 
golden Seasons, with their vicissitudes of contribution, 
for even grim Winter brought its skating-matches and 
shooting-matches, its snow-storms and Christmas-carols, 
— did the Child sit and learn. These things were the 
Alphabet, whereby in aftertime he was to syllable and 
partly read the grand Volume of the World: what mat- 
ters it whether such Alphabet be in large gilt letters or 
in small ungilt ones, so you have an eye to read it? 
For Gneschen, eager to learn, the very act of looking 
thereon was a blessedness that gilded all: his existence 
was a bright, soft element of Joy; out of which, as in 
Prospero's Island, wonder after wonder bodied itself 
forth, to teach by charming. 

' Nevertheless, I were but a vain dreamer to say, that 
even then my felicity was perfect. I had, once for all, 
come down from Heaven into the Earth. Among the 
rainbow colors that glowed on my horizon, lay even in 
childhood a dark ring of Care, as yet no thicker than a 
thread, and often quite overshone; yet always it reap- 
peared, nay ever waxing broader and broader; till in 
after-years it almost over-shadowed my whole canopy, 
and threatened to engulf me in final night. It was the 



IDYLLIC 87 

ring of Necessity whereby we are all begirt; happy he 
for whom a kind heavenly Sun brightens it into a ring of 
Duty, and plays round it with beautiful prismatic dif- 
fractions ; yet ever, as basis and as bourne for our whole 
being, it is there. 

* For the first few years of our terrestrial Apprentice- 
ship, we have not much work to do; but, boarded and 
lodged gratis, are set down mostly to look about us 
over the workshop, and see others work, till we have 
understood the tools a little, and can handle this and 
that. If good Passivity alone, and not good Passivity 
and good Activity together, were the thing wanted, then 
was my early position favorable beyond the most. In 
all that respects openness of Sense, affectionate Temper, 
ingenuous Curiosity, and the fostering of these, what 
more could I have wished? On the other side, however, 
things went not so well. My Active Power (Thatkraft) 
was unfavorably hemmed-in; of which misfortune how 
many traces yet abide with me! In an orderly house, 
where the litter of children's sports is hateful enough, 
your training is too stoical; rather to bear and forbear 
than to make and do. I was forbid much: wishes in 
any measure bold I had to renounce; everywhere a 
strait bond of Obedience inflexibly held me down. Thus 
already Freewill often came in painful collision with 
Necessity; so that my tears flowed, and at seasons the 
Child itself might taste that root of bitterness, where- 
with the whole fruitage of our life is mingled and tem- 
pered. 

' In which habituation to Obedience, truly, it was be- 
yond measure safer to err by excess than by defect. 
Obedience is our universal duty and destiny; wherein 
whoso will not bend must break: too early and too 
thoroughly we cannot be trained to know that Would, in 



88 SARTOR RESARTUS 

this world of ours, is as mere .zero to Should, and for 
most part as the smallest of fractions even to Shall. 
Hereby was laid for me the basis of worldly Discretion, 
nay of Morality itself. Let me not quarrel with my 
upbringing. It was rigorous, too frugal, compressively 
secluded, everyway unscientific: yet in that very strict- 
ness and domestic solitude might there not lie the root 
of deeper earnestness, of the stem from which all noble 
fruit must grow? Above all, how unskilful soever, it 
was loving, it was well-meant, honest; whereby every 
deficiency was helped. My kind Mother, for as such 
I must ever love the good Gretchen, did me one alto- 
gether invaluable service: she taught me, less indeed by 
word than by act and daily reverent look and habitude, 
her own simple version of the Christian Faith. Andreas 
too attended Church; yet more like a parade-duty, for 
which he in the other world expected pay with arrears, 
— as, I trust, he has received; but my Mother, with a 
true woman's heart, and fine though uncultivated sense, 
was in the strictest acceptation Religious. How inde- 
structibly the Good grows, and propagates itself, even 
among the weedy entanglements of Evil! The highest 
whom I knew on Earth I here saw bowed down, with 
awe unspeakable, before a Higher in Heaven: such 
things, especially in infancy, reach inwards to the very 
core of your being; mysteriously does a Holy of Holies 
build itself into visibility in the mysterious deeps; and 
Reverence, the divinest in man, springs forth undying 
from its mean envelopment of Fear. Wouldst thou 
rather be a peasant's son that knew, were it never so 
rudely, there was a God in Heaven and in Man; or a 
duke's son that only knew there were two-and-thirty 
quarters on the family-coach ? ' 

To which last question we must answer: Beware, O 
Teufelsdrockh, of spiritual pride! 



PEDAGOGY 89 

CHAPTER III 

PEDAGOGY 

Hitherto we see young Gneschen, in his indivisible 
case of yellow serge, borne forward mostly on the arms 
of kind Nature alone; seated, indeed, and much to his 
mind, in the terrestrial workshop, but (except his soft 
hazel eyes, which we doubt not already gleamed with a 
still intelligence) called upon for little voluntary move- 
ment there. Hitherto, accordingly, his aspect is rather 
generic, that of an incipient Philosopher and Poet in 
the abstract; perhaps it would puzzle Herr Heuschrecke 
himself to say wherein the special Doctrine of Clothes 
is as yet foreshadowed or betokened. For with 
Gneschen, as with others, the Man may indeed stand 
pictured in the Boy (at least all the pigments are there) ; 
yet only some half of the Man stands in the Child, or 
young Boy, namely, his Passive endowment, not his 
Active. The more impatient are we to discover what 
figure he cuts in this latter capacity; how, when, to 
use his own words, ' he understands the tools a little, 
and can handle this or that,' he will proceed to handle it. 

Here, however, may be the place to state that, in 
much of our Philosopher's history, there is something of 
an almost Hindoo character: nay perhaps in that so 
well-fostered and every-way excellent ' Passivity ' of his, 
which, with no free development of the antagonist 
Activity, distinguished his childhood, we may detect the 
rudiments of much that, in after days, and still in these 
present days, astonishes the world. For the shallow- 
sighted, Teufelsdrockh is oftenest a man without Ac- 
tivity of any kind, a No-man; for the deep-sighted, 
again, a man with Activity almost superabundant, yet so 



90 SARTOR RESARTUS 

spiritual, close-hidden, enigmatic, that no mortal can 
foresee its explosions, or even when it has exploded, so 
much as ascertain its significance. A dangerous, difficult 
temper for the modern European; above all, disadvan- 
tageous in the hero of a Biography ! Now as hereto- 
fore it will behoove the Editor of these pages, were it 
never so unsuccessfully, to do his endeavor. 

Among the earliest tools of any complicacy which a 
man, especially a man of letters, gets to handle, are his 
Class-books. On this portion of his History, Teufels- 
drockh looks down professedly as indifferent. Reading 
he ' cannot remember ever to have learned ' ; so perhaps 
had it by nature. He says generally : ' Of the insignifi- 
cant portion of my Education, which depends on Schools, 
there need almost no notice be taken. I learned what 
others learn; and kept it stored-by in a corner of my 
head, seeing as yet no manner of use in it. My School- 
master, a downbent, brokenhearted, underfoot martyr, 
as others of that guild are, did little for me, except 
discover that he could do little: he, good soul, pro- 
nounced me a genius, fit for the learned professions ; and 
that I must be sent to the Gymnasium, and one day to 
the University. Meanwhile, what printed thing soever 
I could meet with I read. My very copper pocket-money 
I laid-out on stall-literature; which, as it accumulated, 
I with my own hands sewed into volumes. By this 
means was the young head furnished with a consider- 
able miscellany of things and shadows of things : His- 
tory in authentic fragments lay mingled with Fabulous 
chimeras, wherein also was reality; and the whole not as 
dead stuff, but as living pabulum, tolerably nutritive 
for a mind as yet so peptic/ 

That the Entepfuhl Schoolmaster judged well, we 
now know. Indeed, already in the youthful Gneschen, 
with all his outward stillness, there may have been 



PEDAGOGY 91 

manifest an inward vivacity that promised much; symp- 
toms of a spirit singularly open, thoughtful, almost 
poetical. Thus, to say nothing of his Suppers on the 
Orchard-wall, and other phenomena of that earlier pe- 
riod, have many readers of these pages stumbled, in 
their twelfth year, on such reflections as the following? 
' It struck me much, as I sat by the Kuhbach, one silent 
noontide, and watched it flowing, gurgling, to think 
how this same streamlet had flowed and gurgled, through 
all changes of weather and of fortune, from beyond 
the earliest date of History. Yes, probably on the 
morning when Joshua forded Jordan; even as at the 
mid-day when Caesar, doubtless with difficulty, swam the 
Nile, yet kept his Commentaries dry, — this little Kuh- 
bach, assiduous as Tiber, Eurotas or Siloa, was mur- 
muring on across the wilderness, as yet unnamed, 
unseen: here, too, as in the Euphrates and the Ganges, 
is a vein or veinlet of the grand World-circulation of 
Waters, which, with its atmospheric arteries, has lasted 
and lasts simply with the World. Thou fool ! Nature 
alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom; that 
idle crag thou sittest on is six-thousand years of age/ 
In which little thought, as in a little fountain, may 
there not lie the beginning of those well-nigh unutter- 
able meditations on the grandeur and mystery of Time, 
and its relation to Eternity, which play such a part 
in this Philosophy of Clothes? 

Over his Gymnasic and Academic years the Professor 
by no means lingers so lyrical and joyful as over his 
childhood. Green sunny tracts there are still; but in- 
tersected by bitter rivulets of tears, here and there 
stagnating into sour marshes of discontent. ' With my 
first view of the Hinterschlag Gymnasium,' writes he, 
* my evil days began. Well do I still remember the 
red sunny Whitsuntide morning, when, trotting full 



92 SARTOR RESARTUS 

of hope by the side of Father Andreas, I entered the 
main street of the place, and saw its steeple-clock (then 
striking Eight) and Schuldthurm (Jail), and the 
aproned or dis aproned Burghers moving-in to break- 
fast: a little dog, in mad terror, was rushing past; for 
some human imps had tied a tin-kettle to its tail; thus 
did the agonized creature, loud-jingling, career through 
the whole length of the Borough, and become notable 
enough. Fit emblem of many a Conquering Hero, to 
whom Fate (wedding Fantasy to Sense, as it often 
elsewhere does) has malignantly appended a tin-kettle 
of Ambition, to chase him on; which the faster he runs, 
urges him the faster, the more loudly and more foolishly ! 
Fit emblem also of much that awaited myself, in that 
mischievous Den; as in the World, whereof it was a 
portion and epitome ! 

' Alas, the kind beech-rows of Entepfuhl were hidden 
in the distance: I was among strangers, harshly, at best 
indifferently, disposed towards me; the young heart 
felt, for the first time, quite orphaned and alone.' His 
schoolfellows, as is usual, persecuted him : ' They were 
Boys,' he says, ' mostly rude Boys, and obeyed the 
impulse of rude Nature, which bids the deerherd fall 
upon any stricken hart, the duck-flock put to death any 
broken-winged brother or sister, and on all hands the 
strong tyrannize over the weak.' He admits that though 
* perhaps in an unusual degree morally courageous,' he 
succeeded ill in battle, and would fain have avoided it; 
a result, as would appear, owing less to his small per- 
sonal stature (for in passionate seasons he was ' incred- 
ibly nimble'), than to his 'virtuous principles'; 'if it 
was disgraceful to be beaten,' says he, ' it was only a 
shade less disgraceful to have so much as fought; thus 
was I drawn two ways at once, and in this important 
element of school-history, the war-element, had little 



PEDAGOGY 93 

but sorrow.' On the whole, that same excellent ' Pas- 
sivity,' so notable in Teufelsdrockh's childhood, is here 
visibly enough again getting nourishment. ' He wept 
often; indeed to such a degree that he was nicknamed 
Der Weinende (the Tearful), which epithet, till towards 
his thirteenth year, was indeed not quite unmerited. 
Only at rare intervals did the young soul burst-forth 
into fire-eyed rage, and, with a stormfulness (JJnges- 
tilm) under which the boldest quailed, assert that he 
too had Rights of Man, or at least of Mankind In all 
which, who does not discern a fine flower-tree and 
cinnamon-tree (of genius) nigh choked among pump- 
kins, reed-grass and ignoble shrubs; and forced if it 
would live, to struggle upwards only, and not outwards; 
into a height quite sickly, and disproportioned to its 
breadth ? 

We find, moreover, that his Greek and Latin were 
' mechanically ' taught ; Hebrew scarce even mechani- 
cally; much else which they called History, Cosmog- 
raphy, Philosophy, and so forth, no better than not at 
all. So that, except inasmuch as Nature was still busy; 
and he himself ' went about, as was of old his wont, 
among the Craftsmen's workshops, there learning many 
things ' ; and farther lighted on some small store of 
curious reading, in Hans Wachtel the Cooper's house, 
where he lodged, — his time, it would appear, was utterly 
wasted. Which facts the Professor has not yet learned 
to look upon with any contentment. Indeed, throughout 
the whole of this Bag Scorpio, where we now are, and 
often in the following Bag, he shows himself unusually 
animated on the matter of Education, and not without 
some touch of what we might presume to be anger. 

' My Teachers,' says he, ' were hide-bound Pedants, 
without knowledge of man's nature, or of boy's; or of 
aught save their lexicons and quarterly account-books. 



91 SARTOR RESARTUS 

Innumerable dead Vocables (no dead Language, for 
they themselves knew no Language) they crammed into 
us, and called it fostering the growth of mind. How 
can an inanimate, mechanical Gerund grinder, the like 
of whom will, in a subsequent century, be manufactured 
at Niirnberg out of wood and leather, foster the growth 
of anything; much more of Mind, which grows, not 
like a vegetable (by having its roots littered with 
etymological compost), but like a spirit, by mysterious 
contact of Spirit; Thought kindling itself at the fire of 
living Thought? How shall he give kindling, in whose 
own inward man there is no live coal, but all is burnt- 
out to a dead grammatical cinder? The Hinterschlag 
Professors knew syntax enough; and of the human soul 
thus much: that it had a faculty called Memory, and 
could be acted-on through the muscular integument 
by appliance of birch-rods. 

' Alas, so is it everywhere, so will it ever be ; till the 
Hodman is discharged, or reduced to hodbearing; and 
an Architect is hired, and on all hands fitly encouraged: 
till communities and individuals discover, not without 
surprise, that fashioning the souls of a generation by 
Knowledge can rank on a level with blowing their bodies 
to pieces by Gunpowder; that with Generals and Field- 
marshals for killing, there should be world-honored 
Dignitaries, and were it possible, true God-ordained 
Priests, for teaching. But as yet, though the Soldier 
wears openly, and even parades, his butchering-tool, 
nowhere, far as I have traveled, did the Schoolmaster 
make show of his instructing-tool : nay, were he to walk 
abroad with birch girt on thigh, as if he therefrom ex- 
pected honor, would there not, among the idler class, 
perhaps a certain levity be excited ? ' 

In the third year of this Gymnasic period, Father 
Andreas seems to have died: the young Scholar, other- 



PEDAGOGY 95 

wise so maltreated, saw himself for the first time clad 
outwardly in sables, and inwardly in quite inexpressible 
melancholy. ' The dark bottomless Abyss, that lies 
under our feet, had yawned open; the pale kingdoms 
of Death, with all their innumerable silent nations and 
generations, stood before him; the inexorable word, 
Never! now first showed its meaning. My Mother 
wept, and her sorrow got vent; but in my heart there 
lay a whole lake of tears, pent-up in silent desolation. 
Nevertheless the unworn Spirit is strong; Life is so 
healthful that it even finds nourishment in Death: these 
stern experiences, planted down by Memory in my 
Imagination, rose there to a whole cypress-forest, sad 
but beautiful; waving, with not unmelodious sighs, in 
dark luxuriance, in the hottest sunshine, through long 
years of youth: — as in manhood also it does, and will 
do; for I have now pitched my tent under a Cypress- 
tree; the Tomb is now my inexpugnable Fortress, ever 
close by the gate of which I look upon the hostile 
armaments, and pains and penalties of tyrannous Life 
placidly enough, and listen to its loudest threatenings 
with a still smile. O ye loved ones, that already sleep 
in the noiseless Bed of Rest, whom in life I could only 
weep for and never help; and ye, who wide-scattered 
still toil lonely in the monster-bearing Desert, dyeing 
the flinty ground with your blood, — yet a little while, 
and we shall all meet there, and our Mother's bosom 
will screen us all; and Oppression's harness, and Sor- 
row's fire-whip, and all the Gehenna Bailiffs that patrol 
and inhabit ever-vexed Time, cannot thenceforth harm 
us any more ! ' 

Close by which rather beautiful apostrophe, lies a 
labored Character of the deceased Andreas Futteral; of 
his natural ability, his deserts in life (as Prussian Ser- 
geant) ; with long historical inquiries into the genealogy 



98 SARTOR RESARTUS 

of the Futteral Family, here traced back as far as 
Henry the Fowler: the whole of which we pass over, 
not without astonishment. It only concerns us to add, 
that now was the time when Mother Gretchen revealed 
to her foster-son that he was not at all of this kindred; 
or indeed of any kindred, having come into historical 
existence in the way already known to us. ' Thus was 
I doubly orphaned/ says he; 'bereft not only of Pos- 
session, but even of Remembrance. Sorrow and Wonder, 
here suddenly united, could not but produce abundant 
fruit. Such a disclosure, in such a season, struck its 
roots through my whole nature: ever till the years of 
mature manhood, it mingled with my whole thoughts, 
was as the stem whereon all my day-dreams and night- 
dreams grew. A certain poetic elevation, yet also a 
corresponding civic depression, it naturally imparted: 
I was like no other; in which fixed idea, leading some- 
times to highest, and oftenest to frightfullest results, 
may there not lie the first spring of tendencies, which 
in my Life have become remarkable enough? As in 
birth, so in action, speculation, and social position, my 
fellows are perhaps not numerous.' 

In the Bag Sagittarius, as we at length discover, 
Teufelsdrockh has become a University man; though 
how, when, or of what quality, will nowhere . disclose 
itself with the smallest certainty. Few things, in the 
way of confusion and capricious indistinctness, can now 
surprise our readers; not even the total want of dates, 
almost without parallel in a Biographical work. So 
enigmatic, so chaotic we have always found, and must 
always look to find, these scattered Leaves. In Sagit- 
tarius, however, Teufelsdrockh begins to show himself 
even more than usually Sibylline : fragments of all sorts ; 
scraps of regular Memoir, College-Exercises, Programs, 



PEDAGOGY 97 

Professional Testimoniums, Milkscores, torn Billets, 
sometimes to appearance of an amatory cast; all blown 
together as if by merest chance, henceforth bewilder the 
sane Historian. To combine any picture of these Uni- 
versity, and the subsequent, years; much more, to de- 
cipher therein any illustrative primordial elements of 
the Clothes-Philosophy, becomes such a problem as the 
reader may imagine. 

So much we can see; darkly, as through the foliage 
of some wavering thicket: a youth of no common en- 
dowment, who has passed happily through Childhood, 
less happily yet still vigorously through Boyhood, now 
at length perfect in ' dead vocables/ and set down, as 
he hopes, by the living Fountain, there to superadd 
Ideas and Capabilities. From such Fountain he draws, 
diligently, thirstily, yet never or seldom with his whole 
heart, for the water nowise suits his palate; discourage- 
ments, entanglements, aberrations are discoverable or 
supposable. Nor perhaps are even pecuniary distresses 
wanting; for ' the good Gretchen, who in spite of advices 
from not disinterested relatives has sent him hither, must 
after a time withdraw her willing but too feeble hand/ 
Nevertheless in an atmosphere of Poverty and manifold 
Chagrin, the Humor of that young Soul, what character 
is in him, first decisively reveals itself; and, like strong 
sunshine in weeping skies, gives out variety of colors, 
some of which are prismatic. Thus, with the aid of 
Time and of what Time brings, has the stripling Dioge- 
nes Teufelsdrockh waxed into manly stature; and into 
so questionable an aspect, that we ask with new eager- 
ness, How he specially came by it, and regret anew 
that there is no more explicit answer. Certain of the 
intelligible and partially significant fragments, which 
are few in number, shall be extracted from that Limbo 



98 SARTOR RESARTUS 

of a Paper-bag, and presented with the usual prepara- 
tion. 

As if, in the Bag Scorpio, Teufelsdrockh had not 
already expectorated his antipedagogic spleen; as if, 
from the name Sagittarius, he had thought himself 
called upon to shoot arrows, we here again fall-in with 
such matter as this : ' The University where. I was edu- 
cated still stands vivid enough in my remembrance, and 
I know its name well; which name, however, I, from 
tenderness to existing interests and persons, shall in 
nowise divulge. It is my painful duty to say that, out 
of England and Spain, ours was the worst of all hitherto 
discovered Universities. This is indeed a time when 
right Education is, as nearly as may be, impossible: 
however, in degrees of wrongness there is no limit: 
nay, I can conceive a worse system than that of the 
Nameless itself; as poisoned victual may be worse than 
absolute hunger. 

' It is written, When the blind lead the blind, both 
shall fall into the ditch: wherefore, in such circum- 
stances, may it not sometimes be safer, if both leader 
and led simply — sit still? Had you, anywhere in Crim 
Tartary, walled-in a square enclosure; furnished it with 
a small, ill-chosen Library; and then turned loose into 
it eleven-hundred Christian striplings, to tumble about 
as they listed, from three to seven years: certain per- 
sons, under the title of Professors, being stationed at 
the gates, to declare aloud that it was a University, and 
exact considerable admission-fees, — you had, not indeed 
in mechanical structure, yet in spirit and result, some 
imperfect resemblance of our High Seminary. I say, 
imperfect; for if our mechanical structure was quite 
other, so neither was our result altogether the same: 
unhappily, we were not in Crim Tartary, but in a cor- 
rupt European city, full of smoke and sin; moreover, in 



PEDAGOGY 99 

the middle of a Public, which, without far costlier ap- 
paratus than that of the Square Enclosure, and Declara- 
tion aloud, you could not be sure of gulling. 

' Gullible, however, by fit apparatus, all Publics are ; 
and gulled, with the most surprising profit. Towards 
anything like a Statistics of Imposture, indeed, little as 
yet has been done: with a strange indifference, our 
Economists, nigh buried under Tables for minor 
Branches of Industry, have altogether overlooked the 
grand all-overtopping Hypocrisy Branch; as if our 
whole arts of Puffery, of Quackery, Priestcraft, King- 
craft, and the innumerable other crafts and mysteries of 
that genus, had not ranked in Productive Industry at 
all! Can any one, for example, so much as say, What 
moneys, in Literature and Shoeblacking, are realized 
by actual instruction and actual jet Polish; what by 
fictitious-persuasive Proclamation of such; specifying, 
in distinct items, the distributions, circulations, dis- 
bursements, incomings of said moneys, with the smallest 
approach to accuracy? But to ask, How far, in all the 
several infinitely-complected departments of social busi- 
ness, in government, education, in manual, commercial, 
intellectual fabrication of every sort, man's Want is 
supplied by true Ware; how far by the mere Appear- 
ance of true Ware: — in other words, To what extent, 
by what methods, with what effects, in various times 
and countries, Deception takes the place of wages of 
Performance: here truly is an Inquiry big with results 
for the future time, but to which hitherto only the 
vaguest answer can be given. If for the present, in our 
Europe, we estimate the ratio of Ware to Appearance of 
Ware so high even as at One to a Hundred (which, 
considering the Wages of a Pope, Russian Autocrat, or 
English Game-Preserver, is probably not far from the 
mark), — what almost prodigious saving may there not 



100 SARTOR RESARTUS 

be anticipated, as the Statistics of Imposture advances, 
and so the manufacturing of Shams (that of Realities 
rising into clearer and clearer distinction therefrom) 
gradually declines, and at length becomes all but wholly- 
unnecessary ! 

' This for the coming golden ages. What I had to 
remark, for the present brazen one, is, that in several 
provinces, as in Education, Polity, Religion, where so 
much is wanted and indispensable, and so little can 
as yet be furnished, probably Imposture is of sanative, 
anodyne nature, and man's Gullibility not his worst 
blessing. Suppose your sinews of war quite broken: I 
mean your military chest insolvent, forage all but ex- 
hausted; and that the whole army is about to mutiny, 
disband, and cut your and each other's throat, — then 
were it not well could you, as if by miracle, pay them 
in any sort of fairy-money, feed them on coagulated 
water, or mere imagination of meat ; whereby, till the 
real supply came up, they might be kept together and 
quiet? Such perhaps was the aim of Nature, who does 
nothing without aim, in furnishing her favorite, Man, 
with this his so omnipotent or rather omnipatient Talent 
of being Gulled. 

' How beautifully it works, with a little mechanism ; 
nay, almost makes mechanism for itself ! These Pro- 
fessors in the Nameless lived with ease, with safety, 
by a mere Reputation, constructed in past times, and 
then too with no great effort, by quite another class of 
persons. Which Reputation, like a strong, brisk-going 
undershot wheel, sunk into the general current, bade 
fair, with only a little annual repainting on their part, 
to hold long together, and of its own accord assiduously 
grind for them. Happy that it was so, for the Millers ! 
They themselves needed not to work; their attempts at 
working, at what they called Educating, now when I 



PEDAGOGY 101 

look back on it, fill me with a certain mute admiration. 

' Besides all this, we boasted ourselves a Rational 
University; in the highest degree hostile to Mysticism; 
thus was the young vacant mind furnished with much 
talk about Progress of the Species, Dark Ages, Preju- 
dice, and the like; so that all were quickly enough blown 
out into a state of windy argumentativeness; whereby 
the better sort had soon to end in sick, impotent Scepti- 
cism; the worser sort explode (crepiren) in finished Self- 
conceit, and to all spiritual intents become dead. — But 
this too is portion of mankind's lot. If our era is the 
Era of Unbelief, why murmur under it; is there not 
a better coming, nay come? As in long-drawn systole 
and long-drawn diastole, must the period of Faith alter- 
nate with the period of Denial; must the vernal growth, 
the summer luxuriance of all Opinions, Spiritual Repre- 
sentations and Creations, be followed by, and again 
follow, the autumnal decay, the winter dissolution. For 
man lives in Time, has his whole earthly being, endeavor ) 
and destiny shaped for him by Time: only in the transi- 
tory Time-Symbol is the ever-motionless Eternity we 
stand on made manifest. And yet, in such winter- 
seasons of Denial, it is for the nobler-minded perhaps 
a comparative misery to have been born, and to be awake 
and work; and for the duller a felicity, if, like hiber- 
nating animals, safe-lodged in some Salamanca Univer- 
sity, or Sybaris City, or other superstitious or voluptuous 
Castle of Indolence, they can slumber-through in stupid 
dreams, and only awaken when the loud-roaring hail- 
storms have all done their work, and to our prayers and 
martyrdoms the new Spring has been vouchsafed/ 

That in the environment, here mysteriously enough 
shadowed forth Teufelsdrockh must have felt ill at ease, 
cannot be doubtful. ' The hungry young,' he says, 
' looked up to their spiritual Nurses ; and, for food, 



102 SARTOR RESARTUS 

were bidden eat the east-wind. What vain jargon of 
controversial Metaphysic, Etymology, and mechanical 
Manipulation falsely named Science, was current there, 
I indeed learned, better perhaps than the most. Among 
eleven-hundred Christian youths, there will not be want- 
ing some eleven eager to learn. By collision with such, 
a certain warmth, a certain polish was communicated; 
by instinct and happy accident, I took less to rioting 
(renommiren) , than to thinking and reading, which 
latter also I was free to do. Nay from the chaos of 
that Library, I succeeded in fishing-up more books 
perhaps than had been known to the very keepers 
thereof. The foundation of a Literary Life was hereby 
laid. I learned, on my own strength, to read fluently in 
almost all cultivated languages, on almost all subjects 
and sciences ; farther, as man is ever the prime obj ect to 
man, already it was my favorite employment to read 
character in speculation, and from the Writing to con- 
strue the Writer. A certain groundplan of Human Na- 
ture and Life began to fashion itself in me; wondrous 
enough, now when I look back on it; for my whole 
Universe, physical and spiritual, was as yet a Machine! 
However, such a conscious, recognized groundplan, the 
truest I had, was beginning to be there, and by addi- 
tional experiments might be corrected and indefinitely 
extended.* 

Thus from poverty does the strong educe nobler 
wealth; thus in the destitution of the wild desert does 
our young Ishmael acquire for himself the highest of 
all possessions, that of Self-help. Nevertheless a desert 
this was, waste, and howling with savage monsters. 
Teufelsdrockh gives us long details of his ' fever-par- 
oxysms of Doubt ' ; his Inquiries concerning Miracles, 
and the Evidences of religious Faith ; and how ' in the 
silent night-watches, still darker in his heart than over 



PEDAGOGY 103 

aky and earth, he has cast himself before the All-seeing, 
and with audible prayers cried vehemently for Light, 
for deliverance from Death and the Grave. Not till 
after long years, and unspeakable agonies, did the be- 
lieving heart surrender; sink into spell-bound sleep, 
under the nightmare, Unbelief; and, in this hag-ridden 
dream, mistake God's fair living world for a pallid, 
vacant Hades and extinct Pandemonium. But through 
such Purgatory pain,' continues he, ' it is appointed us 
to pass ; first must the dead Letter of Religion own itself 
dead, and drop piecemeal into dust, if the living Spirit 
of Religion, freed from this its charnel-house, is to 
arise on us, newborn of Heaven, and with new healing 
under its wings/ 

To which Purgatory pains, seemingly severe enough, 
if we add a liberal measure of Earthly distresses, want 
of practical guidance, want of sympathy, want of money, 
want of hope ; and all this in the fervid season of youth, 
so exaggerated in imagining, so boundless in desires, 
yet here so poor in means, — do we not see a strong in- 
cipient spirit oppressed and overloaded from without 
and from within; the fire of genius struggling-up among 
fuel-wood of the greenest, and as yet with more of bit- 
ter vapor than of clear flame? 

From various fragments of Letters and other docu- 
mentary scraps, it is to be inferred that Teufelsdrockh, 
isolated, shy, retiring as he was, had not altogether 
escaped notice: certain established men are aware of 
his existence; and, if stretching-out no helpful hand, 
have at least their eyes on him. He appears, though in 
dreary enough humor, to be addressing himself to the 
Profession of Law; — whereof, indeed, the world has 
since seen him a public graduate. But omitting these 
broken, unsatisfactory thrums of Economical relation, 
let us present rather the following small thread of 



104 SARTOR RESARTUS 

Moral relation; and therewith, the reader for himself 
weaving it in at the right place, conclude our dim arras- 
picture of these University years. 

' Here also it was that I formed acquaintance with 
Herr Towgood, or, as it is perhaps better written, Herr 
Toughgut; a young person of quality (van Adel), from 
the interior parts of England. He stood connected, by 
blood and hospitality, with the Counts von Zahdarm, in 
this quarter of Germany; to which noble Family I like- 
wise was, by his means, with all friendliness, brought 
near. Towgood had a fair talent, unspeakably ill- 
cultivated; with considerable humor of character: and, 
bating his total ignorance, for he knew nothing except 
Boxing and a little Grammar, showed less of that aris- 
tocratic impassivity, and silent fury, than for most part 
belongs to Travelers of his nation. To him I owe my 
first practical knowledge of the English and their ways ; 
perhaps also something of the partiality with which I 
have ever since regarded that singular people. Towgood 
was not without an eye, could he have come at any light. 
Invited doubtless by the presence of the Zahdarm Fam- 
ily, he had traveled hither, in the almost frantic hope 
of perfecting his studies; he, whose studies had as yet 
been those of infancy, hither to a University where so 
much as the notion of perfection, not to say the effort 
after it, no longer existed! Often we would condole 
over the hard destiny of the Young in this era: how, 
after all our toil, we were to be turned-out into the 
world, with beards on our chins indeed, but with few 
other attributes of manhood; no existing thing that we 
were trained to Act on, nothing that we could so much 
as Believe. " How has our head on the outside a pol- 
ished Hat," would Towgood exclaim, " and in the 
inside Vacancy, or a froth of Vocables and Attorney- 
Logic ! At a small cost men are educated to make leather 



PEDAGOGY 105 

into shoes; but at a great cost, what am I educated to 
make ? By Heaven, Brother ! what I have already eaten 
and worn, as I came thus far, would endow a consider- 
able Hospital of Incurables." — " Man, indeed," I would 
answer, " has a Digestive Faculty, which must be kept 
working, were it even partly by stealth. But as for 
our Miseducation, make not bad worse; waste not the 
time yet ours, in trampling on thistles because they have 
yielded us no figs. Frisch zu, Bruder ! Here are Books, 
and we have brains to read them; here is a whole Earth 
and a whole Heaven, and we have eyes to look on them: 
Frisch zu! " 

' Often also our talk was gay; not without brilliancy, 
and even fire. We looked-out on Life, with its strange 
scaffolding, where all at once harlequins dance, and 
men are beheaded and quartered: motley, not unterrific 
was the aspect; but we looked on it like brave youths. 
For myself, these were perhaps my most genial hours. 
Towards this young warmhearted, strongheaded and 
wrongheaded Herr Towgood I was even near experi- 
encing the now obsolete sentiment of Friendship. Yes, 
foolish Heathen that I was, I felt that, under certain 
conditions, I could have loved this man, and taken him 
to my bosom, and been his brother once and always. By 
degrees, however, I understood the new time, and its 
wants. If man's Soul is indeed, as in the Finnish 
Language, and Utilitarian Philosophy, a kind of Stom- 
ach, what else is the true meaning of Spiritual Union 
but an Eating together? Thus we, instead of Friends, 
are Dinner-guests; and here as elsewhere have cast 
away chimeras/ 

So ends, abruptly as is usual, and enigmatically, this 
little incipient romance. What henceforth becomes of 
the brave Herr Towgood, or Toughgut? He has dived- 
under, in the Autobiographical Chaos, and swims we 



106 SARTOR RESARTUS 

see not where. Does any reader * in the interior parts 
of England ' know of such a man? 



CHAPTER IV 

GETTING UNDER WAY 

' Thus nevertheless/ writes our Autobiographer, ap- 
parently as quitting College, ' was there realized Some- 
what; namely, I, Diogenes Teuf elsdrockh : a visible 
Temporary Figure (Z.eitbild), occupying some cubic 
feet of Space, and containing within it Forces both physi- 
cal and spiritual; hopes, passions, thoughts; the whole 
wondrous furniture, in more or less perfection, belong- 
ing to that mystery, a Man. Capabilities there were 
in me to give battle, in some small degree, against the 
great Empire of Darkness: does not the very Ditcher 
and D elver, with his spade, extinguish many a thistle 
and puddle; and so leave a little Order, where he found 
the opposite? Nay your very Daymoth has capabili- 
ties in this kind; and ever organizes something (into its 
own Body, if no otherwise), which was before Inor- 
ganic; and of mute dead air makes living music, though 
only of the faintest, by humming. 

' How much more, one whose capabilities are spirit- 
ual; who has learned, or begun learning, the grand 
thaumaturgic art of Thought! Thaumaturgic I name 
it; for hitherto all Miracles have been wrought thereby, 
and henceforth innumerable will be wrought; whereof 
we, even in these days, witness some. Of the Poet's 
and Prophet's inspired Message, and how it makes and 
unmakes whole worlds, I shall forbear mention: but 
cannot the dullest hear Steam-Engines clanking around 



GETTING UNDER WAY 107 

him? Has he not seen the Scottish Brassmith's Idea 
(and this but a mechanical one) traveling on fire- wings 
round the Cape, and across two Oceans; and stronger 
than any other Enchanter's Familiar, on all hands un- 
weariedly fetching and carrying: at home, not only 
weaving Cloth; but rapidly enough overturning the 
whole old system of Society; and, for Feudalism and 
Preservation of the Game, preparing us, by indirect but 
sure methods, Industrialism and the Government of the 
Wisest? Truly a Thinking Man is the worst enemy the 
Prince of Darkness can have; every time such a one 
announces himself, I doubt not, there runs a shudder 
through the Nether Empire; and new Emissaries are 
trained, with new tactics, to, if possible, entrap him, 
and hoodwink and handcuff him. 

' With such high vocation had I too, as denizen of 
the Universe, been called. Unhappy it is, however, that 
though born to the amplest Sovereignty, in this way, 
with no less than sovereign right of Peace and War 
against the Time-Prince (Zeitfiirst), or Devil, and "all 
his Dominions, your coronation-ceremony costs such 
trouble, your scepter is so difficult to get at, or even to 
get eye on ! ' 

By which last wiredrawn similitude does Teufels- 
drockh mean no more than that young men find obstacles 
in what we call ' getting under way ' ? * Not what I 
Have,' continues he, ' but what I Do is my Kingdom. 
To each is given a certain inward Talent, a certain 
outward Environment of Fortune; to each, by wisest 
combination of these two, a certain maximum of Capa- 
bility. But the hardest problem were ever this first: 
To find by study of yourself, and of the ground you 
stand on, what your combined inward and outward 
Capability specially is. For, alas, our young soul is 
all budding with Capabilities, and we see not yet which 



108 SARTOR RESARTUS 

is the main and true one. Always too the new man is 
in a new time, under new conditions; his course can be 
the facsimile of no prior one, but is by its nature origi- 
nal. And then how seldom will the outward Capability 
fit the inward: though talented wonderfully enough, we 
are poor, unfriended, dyspeptical, bashful; nay what 
is worse than all, we are foolish. Thus, in a whole 
imbroglio of Capabilities, we go stupidly groping about, 
to grope which is ours, and often clutch the wrong one: 
in this mad work must several years of our small term 
be spent, till the purblind Youth, by practice, acquire 
notions of distance, and become a seeing Man. Nay, 
many so spend their whole term, and in ever-new expec- 
tation, ever-new disappointment, shift from enterprise 
to enterprise, and from side to side: till at length, as 
exasperated striplings of threescore-and-ten, they shift 
into their last enterprise, that of getting buried. 

* Such, since the most of us are too ophthalmic, would 
be the general fate ; were it not that one thing saves us : 
our Hunger. For on this ground, as the prompt nature 
of Hunger is well known, must a prompt choice be 
made: hence have we, with wise foresight, Indentures 
and Apprenticeships for our irrational young; whereby, 
in due season, the vague universality of a Man shall find 
himself ready-molded into a specific Craftsman; and 
so thenceforth work, with much or with little waste of 
Capability as it may be; yet not with the worst waste, 
that of time. Nay even in matters spiritual, since the 
spiritual artist too is born blind, and does not, like 
certain other creatures, receive sight in nine days, but 
far later, sometimes never, — is it not well that there 
should be what we call Professions, or Bread-studies 
(Brodzwecke) , pre-appointed us? Here, circling like 
the gin-horse, for whom partial or total blindness is no 
evil, the Bread-artist can travel contentedly round and 



GETTING UNDER WAY 109 

round, still fancying that it is forward and forward; 
and realize much: for himself victual; for the world an 
additional horse's power in the grand corn-mill or hemp- 
mill of Economic Society. For me too had such a 
leading-string been provided ; only that it proved a neck- 
halter, and had nigh throttled me, till I broke it off. 
Then, in the words of Ancient Pistol, did the world 
generally become mine oyster, which I, by strength or 
cunning, was to open, as I would and could. Almost 
had I deceased {fast war ich umgekommen) , so obsti- 
nately did it continue shut.' 

We see here, significantly foreshadowed, the spirit of 
much that was to befall our Autobiographer ; the his- 
torical embodiment of which, as it painfully takes shape 
in his Life, lies scattered, in dim disastrous details, 
through this Bag Pisces, and those that follow. A young 
man of high talent, and high though still temper, like 
a young mettled colt, ' breaks-off his neck-halter,' and 
bounds forth, from his peculiar manger, into the wide 
world; which, alas, he finds all rigorously fenced-in. 
Richest clover-fields tempt his eye; but to him they are 
forbidden pasture: either pining in progressive starva- 
tion, he must stand; or, in mad exasperation, must rush 
to and fro, leaping against sheer stone-walls, which he 
cannot leap over, which only lacerate and lame him; 
till at last, after thousand attempts and endurances, he, 
as if by miracle, clears his way; not indeed into lux- 
uriant and luxurious clover, yet into a certain bosky 
wilderness where existence is still possible, and Free- 
dom, though waited on by Scarcity, is not without sweet- 
ness. In a word, Teufelsdrockh having thrown-up his 
legal Profession, finds himself without landmark of 
outward guidance ; whereby his previous want of decided 
Belief, or inward guidance, is frightfully aggravated. 
'Necessity urges him on; Time will not stop, neither can 



110 SARTOR RESARTUS 

he, a Son of Time; wild passions without solacement, 
wild faculties without employment, ever vex and agitate 
him. He too must enact that stern Monodrama, No 
Object and no Rest; must front its successive destinies, 
work through to its catastrophe, and deduce therefrom 
what moral he can. 

Yet let us be just to him, let us admit that his ' neck- 
halter ' sat nowise easy on him ; that he was in some 
degree forced to break it off. If we look at the young 
man's civic position, in this Nameless capital, as he 
emerges from its Nameless University, we can discern 
well that it was far from enviable. His first Law- 
Examination he has come through triumphantly; and 
can even boast that the E acumen Rigorosum need not 
have frightened him ; but though he is hereby * an 
Auscultator of respectability,' what avails it? There is 
next to no employment to be had. Neither, for a youth 
without connections, is the process of Expectation very 
hopeful in itself; nor for one of his disposition much 
cheered from without. ' My fellow Auscultators/ he 
says, ' were Auscultators : they dressed, and digested, 
and talked articulate words; other vitality showed they 
almost none. Small speculation in those eyes, that they 
did glare withal! Sense neither for the high nor for 
the deep, nor for aught human or divine, save only for 
the faintest scent of coming Preferment.' In which 
words, indicating a total estrangement on the part of 
Teufelsdrockh, may there not also lurk traces of a 
bitterness as from wounded vanity? Doubtless these 
prosaic Auscultators may have sniffed at him, with his 
strange ways; and tried to hate, and what was much 
more impossible, to despise him. Friendly communion, 
in any case, there could not be: already has the young 
Teufelsdrockh left the other young geese; and swims 



GETTING UNDER WAY 111 

apart, though as yet uncertain whether he himself is 
cygnet or gosling. 

Perhaps, too, what little employment he had was 
performed ill, at best unpleasantly. ' Great practical 
method and expertness ' he may brag of; but is there 
not also great practical pride, though deep-hidden, only 
the deeper-seated? So shy a man can never have been 
popular. We figure to ourselves, how in those days he 
may have played strange freaks with his independence, 
and so forth: do not his own words betoken as much? 
' Like a very young person, I imagined it was with Work 
alone, and not also with Folly and Sin, in myself and 
others, that I had been appointed to struggle/ Be this 
as it may, his progress from the passive Auscultatorship, 
towards any active Assessorship, is evidently of the 
slowest. By degrees, those same established men, once 
partially inclined to patronize him, seem to withdraw 
their countenance, and give him up as 'a man of 
genius ' : against which procedure he, in these Papers, 
loudly protests. ' As if,' says he, ' the higher did not 
presuppose the lower; as if he who can fly into heaven, 
could not also walk post if he resolved on it! But the 
world is an old woman, and mistakes any gilt farthing 
for a gold coin; whereby being often cheated, she will 
thenceforth trust nothing but the common copper/ 

How our winged sky-messenger, unaccepted as a ter- 
restrial runner, contrived, in the meanwhile, to keep 
himself from flying skyward without return, is not too 
clear from these Documents. Good old Gretchen seems 
to have vanished from the scene, perhaps from the 
Earth; other Horn of Plenty, or even of Parsimony, 
nowhere flows for him ; so that ' the prompt nature of 
Hunger being well known/ we are not without our 
anxiety. From private Tuition, in never so many lan- 
guages and sciences, the aid derivable is small; neither, 



112 SARTOR RESARTUS 






to use his own words, ' does the young Adventurer 
hitherto suspect in himself any literary gift; but at best 
earns bread-and-water wages, by his wide faculty of 
Translation. Nevertheless,' continues he, ' that I sub- 
sisted is clear, for you find me even now alive/ Which 
fact, except upon the principle of our true-hearted, kind 
old Proverb, that ' there is always life for a living one,' 
we must profess ourselves unable to explain. 

Certain Landlords' Bills, and other economic Docu- 
ments, bearing the mark of Settlement, indicate that he 
was not without money ; but, like an independent Hearth- 
holder, if not House-holder, paid his way. Here also 
occurs, among many others, two little mutilated Notes, 
which perhaps throw light on his condition. The first 
has now no date, or writer's name, but a huge Blot; 
and runs to this effect: * The (Inkblot), tied-down by 
previous promise, cannot, except by best wishes, forward 
the Herr Teufelsdrockh's views on the Assessorship in 
question; and sees himself under the cruel necessity of 
forbearing, for the present, what were otherwise his 
duty and joy, to assist in opening the career for a man 
of genius, on whom far higher triumphs are yet wait- 
ing.' The other is on gilt paper; and interests us like 
a sort of epistolary mummy now dead, yet which once 
lived and beneficently worked. We give it in the origi- 
nal : ' Herr TeufelsdrocJch wird von der Frau Grafinn, 
auf Donnerstag, zum Aesthetischen Thee schonstens 
eingeladen.' 

Thus, in answer to a cry for solid pudding, whereof 
there is the most urgent need, comes, epigrammatically 
enough, the invitation to a wash of quite fluid Esthetic 
Tea ! How Teuf elsdrockh, now at actual handgrips with 
Destiny herself, may have comported himself among 
these Musical and Literary Dilettanti of both sexes, like 
a hungry lion invited to a feast of chickenweed, we can 



GETTING UNDER WAY 113 

only conjecture. Perhaps in expressive silence, and 
abstinence: otherwise if the lion, in such case, is to feast 
at all, it cannot be on the chickenweed, but only on the 
chickens. For the rest, as this Frau Grafinn dates from 
the Zahdarm House, she can be no other than the 
Countess and mistress of the same; whose intellectual 
tendencies, and good-will to Teufelsdrockh, whether on 
the footing of Herr Towgood, or on his own footing, 
are hereby manifest. That some sort of relation, indeed, 
continued, for a time, to connect our Autobiographer, 
though perhaps feebly enough, with this noble House, 
we have elsewhere express evidence. Doubtless, if he 
expected patronage, it was in vain; enough for him if 
he here obtained occasional glimpses of the great world, 
from which we at one time fancied him to have been 
always excluded. ' The Zahdarms,' says he, ' lived in 
the soft, sumptuous garniture of Aristocracy; whereto 
Literature and Art, attracted and attached from without, 
were to serve as the handsomest fringing. It was to the 
Gnddigen Frau (her Ladyship) that this latter im- 
provement was due: assiduously she gathered, dexter- 
ously she fitted-on, what fringing was to be had; lace or 
cobweb, as the place yielded.' Was Teufelsdrockh also 
a fringe, of lace or cobweb; or promising to be such? 
'With his Excellent (the Count)/ continues he, 'I 
have more than once had the honor to converse; chiefly 
on general affairs, and the aspect of the world, which he, 
though now past middle life, viewed in no unfavorable 
light; finding indeed, except the Outrooting of Journal- 
ism {die auszurottende Journcdistik), little to desiderate 
therein. On some points, as his Excellenz was not nn- 
choleric, I found it more pleasant to keep silence. Be- 
sides, his occupation being that of Owning Land, there 
might be faculties enough, which, as superfluous for 
such use, were little developed in him.' 



114 SARTOR RESARTUS 

That to Teufelsdrockh the aspect of the world was 
nowise so faultless, and many things besides ' the Out- 
rooting of Journalism ' might have seemed improve- 
ments, we can readily conjecture. With nothing but a 
barren Auscultatorship from without, and so many muti- 
nous thoughts and wishes from within, his position was 
no easy one. ' The Universe,' he says, ' was as a mighty 
Sphinx-riddle, which I knew so little of, yet must rede, 
or be devoured. In red streaks of unspeakable grandeur, 
yet also in the blackness of darkness, was Life, to my 
too-unfurnished Thought, unfolding itself. A strange 
contradiction lay in me; and I as yet knew not the 
solution of it; knew not that spiritual music can spring 
only from discords set in harmony; that but for Evil 
there were no Good, as victory is only possible by bat- 
tle.' 

' I have heard affirmed (surely in jest)/ observes he 
elsewhere, ' by not unphilanthropic persons, that it were 
a real increase of human happiness, could all young men 
from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or 
rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow 
their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sad- 
der and wiser, at the age of twenty-five. With which 
suggestion, at least as considered in the light of a 
practical scheme, I need scarcely say that I nowise coin- 
cide. Nevertheless it is plausibly urged that, as young 
ladies (Madchen) are, to mankind, precisely the most 
delightful in those years; so young gentlemen (Biib- 
chen) do then attain their maximum of detestability. 
Such gawks (Gecken) are they, and foolish peacocks, 
and yet with such a vulturous hunger for self-indul- 
gence; so obstinate, obstreperous, vain-glorious; in all 
senses, so froward and so forward. No mortal's en- 
deavor or attainment will, in the smallest, content the 
as yet unendeavoring, unattaining young gentleman; 



GETTING UNDER WAY 115 

but he could make it all infinitely better, were it worthy 
of him. Life everywhere is the most manageable mat- 
ter, simple as a question in the Rule-of-Three: multiply 
your second and third term together, divide the product 
by the first, and your quotient will be the answer, — 
which you are but an ass if you cannot come at. The 
booby has not yet found-out, by any trial, that, do 
what one will, there is ever a cursed fraction, oftenest 
a decimal repeater, and no net integer quotient so much 
as to be thought of.' 

In which passage does not there lie an implied con- 
fession that Teufelsdrockh himself, besides his outward 
obstructions, had an inward, still greater, to contend 
with; namely, a certain temporary, youthful, yet still 
afflictive derangement of head? Alas, on the former 
side alone, his case was hard enough. ' It continues 
ever true,' says he, ' that Saturn, or Chronos, or what 
we call Time, devours all his Children: only by in- 
cessant Running, by incessant Working, may you (for 
some threescore-and-ten years) escape him; and you too 
he devours at last. Can any Sovereign, or Holy Alliance 
of Sovereigns, bid Time stand still; even in thought, 
shake themselves free of Time? Our whole terrestrial 
being is based on Time, and built of Time; it is wholly 
a Movement, a Time-impulse; Time is the author of it, 
the material of it. Hence also our Whole Duty, which 
is to move, to work, — in the right direction. Are not 
our Bodies and our Souls in continual movement, 
whether we will or not; in a continual Waste, requiring 
a continual Repair? Utmost satisfaction of our whole 
outward and inward Wants were but satisfaction for 
a space of Time; thus, whatso we have done, is done, 
and for us annihilated, and ever must we go and do 
anew. O Time-Spirit, how hast thou environed and im- 
prisoned us, and sunk us so deep in thy troublous dim 



116 SARTOR RESARTUS 

Time-Element, that only in lucid moments can so much 
as glimpses of our upper Azure Home be revealed to us ! 
Me, however, as a Son of Time, unhappier than some 
others, was Time threatening to eat quite prematurely; 
for, strive as I might, there was no good Running, so 
obstructed was the path, so gyved were the feet/ That 
is to say, we presume, speaking in the dialect of this 
lower world, that Teufelsdrockh's whole duty and neces- 
sity was, like other men's, ' to work, — in the right direc- 
tion/ and that no work was to be had; whereby he 
became wretched enough. As was natural: with haggard 
Scarcity threatening him in the distance; and so vehe- 
ment a soul languishing in restless inaction, and forced 
thereby, like Sir Hudibras's sword by rust, 

To eat into itself, for lack 

Of something else to hew and hack! 

But on the whole, that same ' excellent Passivity/ as 
it has all along done, is here again vigorously flourish- 
ing; in which circumstance may we not trace the be- 
ginnings of much that now characterizes our Professor; 
and perhaps, in faint rudiments, the origin of the 
Clothes-Philosophy itself? Already the attitude he has 
assumed towards the World is too defensive; not, as 
would have been desirable, a bold attitude of attack. 
* So far hitherto/ he says, ' as I had mingled with man- 
kind, I was notable, if for anything, for a certain still- 
ness of manner, which, as my friends often rebukingly 
declared, did but ill express the keen ardor of my feel- 
ings. I, in truth, regarded men with an excess both 
of love and of fear. The mystery of a Person, indeed, 
is ever divine to him that has a sense for the Godlike. 
Often, notwithstanding, was I blamed, and by half- 
strangers hated, for my so-called Hardness (Harte), 
my IndifFerentism towards men; and the seemingly 



GETTING UNDER WAY 117 

ironic tone I had adopted, as my favorite dialect in 
conversation. Alas, the panoply of Sarcasm was but 
as a buckram case, wherein I had striven to envelope 
myself; that so my own poor Person might live safe 
there, and in all friendliness, being no longer exasper- 
ated by wounds. Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, 
the language of the Devil; for which reason I have 
long since as good as renounced it. But how many 
individuals did I, in those days, provoke into some de- 
gree of hostility thereby! An ironic man, with his sly 
stillness, and ambuscading ways, more especially an 
ironic young man, from whom it is least expected, may 
be viewed as a pest to society. Have we not seen per- 
sons of weight and name coming forward, with gentlest 
indifference, to tread such a one out of sight, as an 
insignificancy and worm, start ceiling-high (balken- 
hoch), and thence fall shattered and supine, to be borne 
home on shutters, not without indignation, when he 
proved electric and a torpedo ! ' 

Alas, how can a man with this devilishness of temper 
make way for himself in Life; where the first problem, 
as Teufelsdrbckh too admits, is ' to unite yourself with 
some one and with somewhat (sich anzuschliessen)'} 
Division, not union, is written on most part of his pro- 
cedure. Let us add too that, in no great length of time, 
the only important connection he had ever succeeded in 
forming, his connection with the Zahdarm Family, seems 
to have been paralyzed, for all practical uses, by the 
death of the ' not uncholeric ' old Count. This fact 
stands recorded, quite incidentally, in a certain Dis- 
course on Epitaphs, huddled into the present Bag, among 
so much else; of which Essay the learning and curious 
penetration are more to be approved of than the spirit. 
His grand principle is, that lapidary inscriptions, of 
what sort soever, should be Historical rather than 



118 SARTOR RESARTUS 

Lyrical. ' By request of that worthy Nobleman's sur- 
vivors/ says he, ' I undertook to compose his Epitaph ; 
and not unmindful of my own rules, produced the fol- 
lowing; which however, for an alleged defect of Latin- 
ity, a defect never yet fully visible to myself, still 
remains unengraven;' — wherein, we may predict, there 
is more than the Latinity that will surprise an English 
reader: 

HIC JACET 

PHILIPPUS ZAEHDARM, COGNOMINE MAGNUS, 

ZAEHDARMI COMES, 

EX IMPERII CONCILIO, 

VELLERIS AUREI, PERISCELIDIS, NECNON VULTURIS NIGRI 

EQUES. 
aUI DUM SUB LUNA AGEBAT, 

QUINQUIES MILLE PERDICES 
plumbo confecit: 

VARII CIBI 

CENTUMPONDIA MILLIES CENT EN A MILLIA, 

PER SE, PERQUE SERVOS QUADRUPEDES BIPEDESVE, 

HAUD SINE TUMULTU DEVOLVE NS, 

IN STERCUS 

PALAM CONVERTIT. 

NUNC A LABORE REQUIESCENTEM 

OPERA SEaUUNTUR. 

SI MONUMENTUM QU^ERIS, 

FIMETUM ADSPICE. 

PRIMUM IN ORBE DEJECIT [sub dato] ; POSTREMUM [sub dato]. 



CHAPTER V 

ROMANCE 

' For long years/ writes Teufelsdrockh, ' had the poor 
Hebrew, in this Egypt of an Auscultatorship, painfully 
toiled, baking bricks without stubble, before ever the 



ROMANCE 119 

question once struck him with entire force: For what? — 
Beym Himmell For Food and Warmth! And are 
Food and Warmth nowhere else, in the whole wide 
Universe, discoverable? — Come of it what might, I re- 
solved to try.' 

Thus then are we to see him in a new independent 
capacity, though perhaps far from an improved one. 
Teufelsdrockh is now a man without Profession. Quit- 
ting the common Fleet of herring-busses and whalers, 
where indeed his leeward, laggard condition was painful 
enough, he desperately steers off, on a course of his 
own, by sextant and compass of his own. Unhappy 
Teufelsdrockh ! Though neither Fleet, nor Traffic, nor 
Commodores pleased thee, still was it not a Fleet, sail- 
ing in prescribed track, for fixed objects; above all, in 
combination, wherein, by mutual guidance, by all man- 
ner of loans and borrowings, each could manifoldly aid 
the other? How wilt thou sail in unknown seas; and 
for thyself find that shorter North-west Passage to thy 
fair Spice-country of a Nowhere? — A solitary rover, on 
such a voyage, with such nautical tactics, will meet with 
adventures. Nay, as we forthwith discover, a certain 
Calypso-Island detains him at the very outset; and as it 
were falsifies and oversets his whole reckoning. 

' If in youth,' writes he once, ' the Universe is majesti- 
cally unveiling, and everywhere Heaven revealing itself 
on Earth, nowhere to the Young Man does this Heaven 
on Earth so immediately reveal itself as in the Young 
Maiden. Strangely enough, in this strange life of ours, 
it has been so appointed. On the whole, as I have often 
said, a Person (PersonlichJceit) is ever holy to us; a 
certain orthodox Anthropomorphism connects my Me 
with all Thees in bonds of Love : but it is in this approxi- 
mation of the Like and Unlike, that such heavenly at- 
traction, as between Negative and Positive, first burns- 



120 SARTOR RESARTUS 

out into a flame. Is the pitifullest mortal Person, think 
you, indifferent to us? Is it not rather our heartfelt 
wish to be made one with him; to unite him to us, by 
gratitude, by admiration, even by fear; or failing all 
these, unite ourselves to him? But how much more, in 
this case of the Like-Unlike! Here is conceded us 
the higher mystic possibility of such a union, the highest 
in our Earth; thus, in the conducting medium of Fan- 
tasy, flames-forth that ^re-development of the universal 
Spiritual Electricity, which, as unfolded between man 
and woman, we first emphatically denominate Love. 

' In every well-conditioned stripling, as I conjecture, 
there already blooms a certain prospective Paradise, 
cheered by some fairest Eve; nor, in the stately vistas, 
and flowerage and foliage of that Garden, is a Tree of 
Knowledge, beautiful and awful in the midst thereof, 
wanting. Perhaps too the whole is but the lovelier, if 
Cherubim and a Flaming Sword divide it from all foot- 
steps of men; and grant him, the imaginative stripling, 
only the view, not the entrance. Happy season of vir- 
tuous youth, when shame is still an impassable celestial 
barrier; and the sacred air-cities of Hope have not 
shrunk into the mean clay-hamlets of Reality; and man, 
by his nature, is yet infinite and free ! 

' As for our young Forlorn,' continues Teuf elsdrockh, 
evidently meaning himself, ' in his secluded way of life, 
and with his glowing Fantasy, the more fiery that it 
burnt under cover, as in a reverberating furnace, his 
feeling towards the Queens of this Earth was, and in- 
deed is, altogether unspeakable. A visible Divinity 
dwelt in them; to our young Friend all women were 
holy, were heavenly. As yet he but saw them flitting 
past, in their many-colored angel-plumage; or hovering 
mute and inaccessible on the outskirts of Esthetic Tea: 
all of air they were, all Soul and Form; so lovely, like 



ROMANCE 121 

mysterious priestesses, in whose hand was the invisible 
Jacob's-ladder, whereby man might mount into very 
Heaven. That he, our poor Friend, should ever win for 
himself one of these Gracefuls (Holden) — Ach Gott! 
how could he hope it; should he not have died under 
it? There was a certain delirious vertigo in the 
thought. 

' Thus was the young man, if all-skeptical of Demons 
and Angels such as the vulgar had once believed in, 
nevertheless not un visited by hosts of true Sky-born, who 
visibly and audibly hovered round him wheresoever he 
went ; and they had that religious worship in his thought, 
though as yet it was by their mere earthly and trivial 
name that he named them. But now, if on a soul so 
circumstanced, some actual Air-maiden, incorporated 
into tangibility and reality, should cast any electric 
glance of kind eyes, saying thereby, " Thou too mayst 
love and be loved " ; and so kindle him, — good Heaven, 
what a volcanic, earthquake-bringing, all-consuming fire 
were probably kindled ! ' 

Such a fire, it afterwards appears, did actually burst- 
forth, with explosions more or less Vesuvian, in the inner 
man of Herr Diogenes; as indeed how could it fail? A 
nature, which, in his own figurative style, we might say, 
had now not a little carbonized tinder, of Irritability; 
with so much niter of latent Passion, and sulphurous 
Humor enough; the whole lying in such hot neighbor- 
hood, close by 'a reverberating furnace of Fantasy': 
have we not here the components of driest Gunpowder, 
ready, on occasion of the smallest spark, to blaze-up? 
Neither, in this our Life-element, are sparks anywhere 
wanting. Without doubt, some Angel, whereof so many 
hovered round, would one day, leaving ' the outskirts 
of Esthetic Tea,' flit nigher ; and, by electric Promethean 
glance, kindle no despicable firework. Happy, if it 



122 SARTOR RESARTUS 

indeed proved a Firework, and flamed-off rocket-wise, 
in successive beautiful bursts of splendor, each growing 
naturally from the other, through the several stages of 
a happy Youthful Love ; till the whole were safely burnt- 
out; and the young soul relieved with little damage! 
Happy, if it did not rather prove a Conflagration and 
mad Explosion; painfully lacerating the heart itself; 
nay perhaps bursting the heart in pieces (which were 
Death) ; or at best, bursting the thin walls of your 
1 reverberating furnace,' so that it rage thenceforth all 
unchecked among the contiguous combustibles (which 
were Madness) : till of the so fair and manifold internal 
world of our Diogenes, there remained Nothing, or only 
the ' crater of an extinct volcano ' ! 

From multifarious Documents in this Bag Capri- 
cornus, and in the adjacent ones on both sides thereof, 
it becomes manifest that our philosopher, as stoical and 
cynical as he now looks, was heartily and even franti- 
cally in Love: here therefore may our old doubts whether 
his heart were of stone or of flesh give way. He loved 
once; not wisely but too well. And once only: for as 
your Congreve needs a new case or wrappage for every 
new rocket, so each human heart can properly exhibit 
but one Love, if even one ; the ' First Love which is in- 
finite ' can be followed by no second like unto it. In 
more recent years, accordingly, the Editor of these 
Sheets was led to regard Teufelsdrockh as a man not 
only who would never wed, but who would never even 
flirt; whom the grand-climacteric itself, and St Martin's 
Summer of incipient Dotage, would crown with no new 
myrtle-garland. To the Professor, women are hence- 
forth Pieces of Art; of Celestial Art, indeed; which 
celestial pieces he glories to survey in galleries, but has 
lost thought of purchasing. 

Psychological readers are not without curiosity to see 



ROMANCE 123 

how Teufelsdrockh, in this for him unexampled predica- 
ment, demeans himself; with what specialties of succes- 
sive configuration, splendor and color, his Firework 
blazes-off. Small, as usual, is the satisfaction that such 
can meet with here. From amid these confused masses 
of Eulogy and Elegy, with their mad Petrarchan and 
Werterean ware lying madly scattered among all sorts 
of quite extraneous matter, not so much as the fair one's 
name can be deciphered. For, without doubt, the title 
Blumine, whereby she is here designated, and which 
means simply Goddess of Flowers, must be fictitious. 
Was her real name Flora, then ? But what was her sur- 
name, or had she none? Of what station in Life was 
she; of what parentage, fortune, aspect? Specially, by 
what Preestablished Harmony of occurrences did the 
Lover and the Loved meet one another in so wide a 
world; how did they behave in such a meeting? To all 
which questions, not unessential in a Biographic work, 
mere Conjecture must for most part return answer. ' It 
was appointed/ says our Philosopher, ' that the high 
celestial orbit of Blumine should intersect the low sub- 
lunary one of our Forlorn; that he, looking in her 
empyrean eyes, should fancy the upper Sphere of Light 
was come down into this nether sphere of Shadows; 
and finding himself mistaken, make noise enough.' 

We seem to gather that she was young, hazel-eyed, 
beautiful, and some one's Cousin; highborn, and of high 
spirit; but unhappily dependent and insolvent; living, 
perhaps, on the not too gracious bounty of moneyed rela- 
tives. But how came 'the Wanderer' into her circle? 
Was it by the humid vehicle of Esthetic Tea, or by the 
arid one of mere Business? Was it on the hand 
of Herr Towgood; or of the Gnadige Frau, who, as an 
ornamental Artist, might sometimes like to promote flir- 
tation, especially for young cynical Nondescripts? To 



124 SARTOR RESARTUS 

all appearance, it was chiefly by Accident, and the grace 
of Nature. 

' Thou fair Waldschloss/ writes our Autobiographer, 
' what stranger ever saw thee, were it even an absolved 
Auscultatory officially bearing in his pocket the last 
Relatio ex Actis he would ever write, but must have 
paused to wonder ! Noble Mansion ! There stoodest 
thou, in deep Mountain Amphitheater, on umbrageous 
lawns, in thy serene solitude; stately, massive, all of 
granite; glittering in the western sunbeams, like a pal- 
ace of El Dorado, overlaid with precious metal. Beau- 
tiful rose up, in wavy curvature, the slope of thy guar- 
dian Hills; of the greenest was their sward, embossed 
with its dark-brown frets of crag, or spotted by some 
spreading solitary Tree and its shadow. To the un- 
conscious Wayfarer thou wert r!so as an Ammon's 
Temple, in the Libyan Waste; where, for joy and woe, 
the tablet of his Destiny lay written. Well might he 
pause and gaze ; in that glance of his were prophecy and 
nameless forebodings/ 

But now let us conjecture that the so presentient 
Auscultator has handed-in his Relatio ex Actis; been 
invited to a glass of Rhine-wine; and so, instead of re- 
turning dispirited and athirst to his dusty Town-home, 
is ushered into the Gardenhouse, where sit the choicest 
party of dames and cavaliers: if not engaged in Esthetic 
Tea, yet in trustful evening conversation, and perhaps 
Musical Coffee, for we hear of ' harps and pure voices 
making the stillness live.* Scarcely, it would seem, is 
the Gardenhouse inferior in respectability to the noble 
mansion itself. ' Embowered amid rich foliage, rose- 
clusters, and the hues and odors of thousand flowers, 
here sat that brave company; in front, from the wide- 
opened doors, fair outlook over blossom and bush, over 
grove and velvet green, stretching, undulating onwards 



ROMANCE 125 

to the remote Mountain peaks: so bright, so mild, and 
everywhere the melody of birds and happy creatures: 
it was all as if man had stolen a shelter from the Sun 
in the bosom-vesture of Summer herself. How came it 
that the Wanderer advanced thither with such fore- 
casting heart (ahndungsvoll) , by the side of his gay 
host? Did he feel that to these soft influences his hard 
bosom ought to be shut; that here, once more, Fate had 
it in view to try him ; to mock him, and see whether there 
were Humor in him? 

' Next moment he finds himself presented to the 
party; and especially by name to — Blumine! Peculiar 
among all dames and damosels glanced Blumine, there 
in her modesty, like a star among earthly lights. 
Noblest maiden ! whom he bent to, in body and in soul ; 
yet scarcely dared look at, for the presence filled him 
with painful yet sweetest embarrassment. 

' Blumine's was a name well known to him ; far and 
wide was the fair one heard of, for her gifts, her graces, 
her caprices: from all which vague colorings of Rumor, 
from the censures no less than from the praises, had our 
friend painted for himself a certain imperious Queen of 
Hearts, and blooming warm Earth-angel, much more 
enchanting than your mere white Heaven-angels of 
women, in whose placid veins circulates too little 
naphtha-fire. Herself also he had seen in public places ; 
that light yet so stately form; those dark tresses, shad- 
ing a face where smiles and sunlight played over earnest 
deeps: but all this he had seen only as a magic vision, 
for him inaccessible, almost without reality. Her sphere 
was too far from his ; how should she ever think of him ; 
O Heaven! how should they so much as once meet to- 
gether? And now that Rose-goddess sits in the same 
circle with him; the light of her eyes has smiled on him; 
if he speak, she will hear it! Nay, who knows, since 



126 SARTOR RESARTUS 






the heavenly Sun looks into lowest valleys, but Blumine 
herself might have aforetime noted the so unnotable; 
perhaps, from his very gainsayers, as he had from hers, 
gathered wonder, gathered favor for him? Was the 
attraction, the agitation mutual, then; pole and pole 
trembling towards contact, when once brought into 
neighborhood? Say rather, heart swelling in presence 
of the Queen of Hearts; like the Sea swelling when 
once near its Moon! With the Wanderer it was even 
so: as in heavenward gravitation, suddenly as at the 
touch of a Seraph's wand, his whole soul is roused from 
its deepest recesses; and all that was painful and that 
was blissful there, dim images, vague feelings of a 
whole Past and a whole Future, are heaving in unquiet 
eddies within him. 

' Often, in far less agitating scenes, had our still 
Friend shrunk forcibly together; and shrouded-up his 
tremors and flutterings, of what sort soever, in a safe 
cover of Silence, and perhaps of seeming Stolidity. 
How was it, then, that here, when trembling to the cere 
of his heart, he did not sink into swoons, but rose into 
strength, into fearlessness and clearness? It was his 
guiding Genius {Damon) that inspired him; he must 
go forth and meet his Destiny. Show thyself now, whis- 
pered it, or be forever hid. Thus sometimes it is even 
when your anxiety becomes transcendental, that the soul 
first feels herself able to transcend it; that she rises 
above it, in fiery victory; and borne on new-found wings 
of victory, moves so calmly, even because so rapidly, so 
irresistibly. Always must the Wanderer remember, with 
a certain satisfaction and surprise, how in this case he 
sat not silent, but struck adroitly into the stream of con- 
versation; which thenceforth, to speak with an apparent 
not a real vanity, he may say that he continued to lead. 
Surely, in those hours, a certain inspiration was im- 



ROMANCE 127 

parted him, such inspiration as is still possible in our 
late era. The self-secluded unfolds himself in noble 
thoughts, in free, glowing words; his soul is as one sea 
of light, the peculiar home of Truth and Intellect; 
wherein also Fantasy bodies-forth form after form, 
radiant with all prismatic hues.' 

It appears, in this otherwise so happy meeting, there 
talked one ' Philistine ' ; who even now, to the general 
weariness, was dominantly pouring-forth Philistinism 
(Philistriositaten) ; little witting what hero was here 
entering to demolish him! We omit the series of So- 
cratic, or rather Diogenic utterances, not unhappy in 
their way, whereby the monster, ' persuaded into silence,' 
seems soon after to have withdrawn for the night. ' Of 
which dialectic marauder,' writes our hero, ' the discom- 
fiture was visibly felt as a benefit by most: but what 
were all applauses to the glad smile, threatening every 
moment to become a laugh, wherewith Blumine herself 
repaid the victor ? He ventured to address her, she an- 
swered with attention: nay what if there were a slight 
tremor in that silver voice; what if the red glow of 
evening were hiding a transient blush ! 

' The conversation took a higher tone, one fine thought 
called forth another: it was one of those rare seasons, 
when the soul expands with full freedom, and man feels 
himself brought near to man. Gaily in light, graceful 
abandonment, the friendly talk played round that circle; 
for the burden was rolled from every heart; the barriers 
of Ceremony, which are indeed the laws of polite liv- 
ing, had melted as into vapor; and the poor claims of 
Me and Thee, no longer parted by rigid fences, now 
flowed softly into one another; and Life lay all har- 
monious, many-tinted, like some fair royal champaign, 
the sovereign and owner of which were Love only. Such 
music springs from kind hearts, in a kind environment 



128 SARTOR RESARTUS 

of place and time. And yet as the light grew more aerial 
on the mountain-tops, and the shadows fell longer over 
the valley, some faint tone of sadness iray have breathed 
through the heart; and, in whispers more or less audible, 
reminded every one that as this bright day was drawing 
towards its close, so likewise must the Day of Man's 
Existence decline into dust and darkness ; and with all 
its sick toilings, and joyful and mournful noises, sink 
in the still Eternity. 

' To our Friend the hours seemed moments ; holy was 
he and happy: the words from those sweetest lips came 
over him like dew on thirsty grass; all better feelings 
in his soul seemed to whisper, It is good for us to be 
here. At parting, the Blumine's hand was in his: in 
the balmy twilight, with the kind stars above them, he 
spoke something of meeting again, which was not con- 
tradicted; he pressed gently those small soft fingers, and 
it seemed as if they were not hastily, not angrily with- 
drawn.' 

Poor Teuf elsdrockh ! it is clear to demonstration thou 
art smit: the Queen of Hearts would see a 'man of 
genius ' also sigh for her ; and there, by art-magic, in 
that preternatural hour, has she bound and spell-bound 
thee. ' Love is not altogether a Delirium,' says he else- 
where ; ' yet has it many points in common therewith. 
I call it rather a discerning of the Infinite in the Finite, 
of the Idea made Real; which discerning again may 
be either true or false, either seraphic or demoniac, In- 
spiration or Insanity. But in the former case too, as 
in common Madness, it is Fantasy that superadds itself 
to sight; on the so petty domain of the Actual plants 
its Archimedes-lever, whereby to move at will the infin- 
ite Spiritual. Fantasy I might call the true Heaven- 
gate and Hell-gate of man: his sensuous life is but the 
small temporary stage (Zeitbiihne), whereon thick- 



ROMANCE 129 

streaming influences from both these far yet near regions 
meet visibly, and act tragedy and melodrama. Sense 
can support herself handsomely, in most countries, for 
some eighteen-pence a day; but for Fantasy planets and 
solar-systems will not suffice. Witness your Pyrrhus 
conquering the world, yet drinking no better red wine 
than he had before.' Alas ! witness also your Diogenes, 
flame-clad, scaling the upper Heaven, and verging to- 
wards Insanity, for prize of a ' high-souled Brunette/ 
as if the earth held but one and not several of these! 

He says that, in Town, they met again : ' day after 
day, like his heart's sun, the blooming Blumine shone 
on him. Ah! a little while ago, and he was yet in all 
darkness : him what Graceful (Holde) would ever love ? 
Disbelieving all things, the poor youth had never learned 
to believe in himself. Withdrawn, in proud timidity, 
within his own fastnesses; solitary from men, yet baited 
by night-specters enough, he saw himself, with a sad 
indignation, constrained to renounce the fairest hopes 
of existence. And now, O now ! " She looks on thee," 
cried he: " she the fairest, noblest; do not her dark eyes 
tell thee, thou art not despised ? The Heaven's-Messen- 
ger ! All Heaven's blessings be hers ! " Thus did soft 
melodies flow through his heart; tones of an infinite 
gratitude; sweetest intimations that he also was a man, 
that for him also unutterable joys had been provided. 

* In free speech, earnest or gay, amid lambent glances, 
laughter, tears, and often with the inarticulate mystic 
speech of Music: such was the element they now lived 
in; in such a many-tinted, radiant Aurora, and by this 
fairest of Orient Light-bringers must our Friend be 
blandished, and the new Apocalypse of Nature unrolled 
to him. Fairest Blumine ! And, even as a Star, all Fire 
and humid Softness, a very Light-ray incarnate! Was 
there so much as a fault, a "caprice," he could have 



130 SARTOR RESARTUS 



dispensed with? Was she not to him in very deed 
Morning-Star; did not her presence bring with it airs 
from Heaven? As from iEolian Harps in the breath of 
dawn, as from the Memnon's Statue struck by the rosy 
finger of Aurora, unearthly music was around him., and 
lapped him into untried balmy Rest. Pale Doubt fled 
away to the distance; Life bloomed-up with happiness 
and hope. The past, then, was all a haggard dream; 
he had been in the Garden of Eden, then, and could not 
discern it! But lo now! the black walls of his prison 
melt away; the captive is alive, is free. If he loved 
his Disenchantress ? Ach Gott! His whole heart and 
soul and life were hers, but never had he named it 
Love: existence was all a Feeling, not yet shaped into 
a Thought/ 

Nevertheless, into a Thought, nay into an Action, it 
must be shaped; for neither Disenchanter nor Disen- 
chantress, mere ' Children of Time,' can abide by Feel- 
ing alone. The Professor knows not, to this day, ' how 
in her soft, fervid bosom the Lovely found determina- 
tion, even on hest of Necessity, to cut asunder these so 
blissful bonds.' He even appears surprised at the 
' Duenna Cousin,' whoever she may have been, * in whose 
meager, hunger-bitten philosophy, the religion of young 
hearts was, from the first, faintly approved of.' We, 
even at such distance, can explain it without necromancy. 
Let the Philosopher answer this one question. What 
figure, at that period, was a Mrs. Teufelsdrockh likely 
to make in polished society? Could she have driven so 
much as a brass-bound Gig, or even a simple iron-spring 
one ? Thou foolish ' absolved Auscultator,' before whom 
lies no prospect of capital, will any yet known ' religion 
of young hearts ' keep the human kitchen warm ? 
Pshaw ! thy divine Blumine, when she ' resigned herself 



no 



ROMANCE 131 

to wed some richer/ shows more philosophy, though but 
' a woman of genius,' than thou, a pretended man. 

Our readers have witnessed the origin of this Love- 
mania, and with what royal splendor it waxes, and rises. 
Let no one ask us to unfold the glories of its dominant 
state; much less the horrors of its almost instantaneous 
dissolution. How from such inorganic masses, hence- 
forth madder than ever, as lie in these Bags, can even 
fragments of a living delineation be organized? Be- 
sides, of what profit were it? We view, with a lively 
pleasure, the gay silk Montgolfier start from the ground, 
and shoot upwards, cleaving the liquid deeps, till it 
dwindle to a luminous star: but what is there to look 
longer on, when once, by natural elasticity, or accident 
of fire, it has exploded ? A hapless air-navigator, plung- 
ing, amid torn parachutes, sand-bags, and confused 
wreck, fast enough into the jaws of the Devil! Suffice 
it to know that Teufelsdrockh rose into the highest 
regions of the Empyrean, by a natural parabolic track, 
and returned thence in a quick perpendicular one. For 
the rest, let any feeling reader, who has been unhappy 
enough to do the like, paint it out for himself: consider- 
ing only that if he, for his perhaps comparatively in- 
significant mistress, underwent such agonies and frenzies, 
what must Teufelsdrbckh's have been, with a fire-heart, 
and for a nonpareil Blumine ! We glance merely at the 
final scene: 

' One morning, he found his Morning-star all dimmed 
and dusky-red; the fair creature was silent, absent, she 
seemed to have been weeping. Alas, no longer a Morn- 
ing-star, but a troublous skyey Portent, announcing 
that the Doomsday had dawned! She said, in a tremu- 
lous voice, They were to meet no more/ The thunder- 
struck Air-sailor is not wanting to himself in this dread 
hour: but what avails it? We omit the passionate ex- 



132 SARTOR RESARTUS 

postulations, entreaties, indignations, since all was vain, 
and not even an explanation was conceded him; and 
hasten to the catastrophe. ' " Farewell, then, Madam ! " 
said he, not without sternness, for his stung pride helped 
him. She put her hand in his, she looked in his face, 
tears started to her eyes ; in wild audacity he 'clasped 
her to his bosom ; their lips were j oined, their two souls, 
like two dew-drops, rushed into one, — for the first time, 
and for the last ! ' Thus was Teuf elsdrockh made im- 
mortal by a kiss. And then? Why, then — 'thick cur- 
tains of Night rushed over his soul, as rose the 
immeasurable Crash of Doom; and through the ruins 
as of a shivered Universe was he falling, falling, to- 
wards the Abyss/ 



CHAPTER VI 

SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH 

We have long felt that, with a man like our Professor, 
matters must often be expected to take a course of their 
own; that in so multiplex, intricate a nature, there might 
be channels, both for admitting and emitting, such as 
the Psychologist had seldom noted; in short, that on 
no grand occasion and convulsion, neither in the joy- 
storm nor in the woe-storm, could you predict his de- 
meanor. 

To our less philosophical readers, for example, it is 
now clear that the so passionate Teufelsdrockh, precipi- 
tated through ' a shivered Universe ' in this extraordi- 
nary way has only one of three things which he can next 
do: Establish himself in Bedlam; begin writing Satanic 
Poetry; or blow-out his brains. In the progress towards 
any of which consummations, do not such readers an- 



SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH 133 

ticipate extravagance enough; breast-beating, brow- 
beating (against walls), lion-bellowings of blasphemy 
and the like, stampings, smitings, breakages of furni- 
ture, if not arson itself ? 

Nowise so does Teufelsdrockh deport him. He quietly 
lifts his Pilgerstab (Pilgrim-staff), ' old business being 
soon wound-up ' ; and begins a perambulation and cir- 
cumambulation of the terraqueous Globe ! Curious it is, 
indeed, how with such vivacity of conception, such in- 
tensity of feeling, above all, with these unconscionable 
habits of Exaggeration in speech, he combines that 
wonderful stillness of his, that stoicism in external pro- 
cedure. Thus, if his sudden bereavement, in this matter 
of the Flower-goddess, is talked of as a real Doomsday 
and Dissolution of Nature, in which light doubtless it 
partly appeared to himself, his own nature is nowise 
dissolved thereby ; but rather is compressed closer. For 
once, as we might say, a Blumine by magic appliances 
has unlocked that shut heart of his, and its hidden things 
rush-out tumultuous, boundless, like genii enfranchised 
from their glass phial: but no sooner are your magic 
appliances withdrawn, than the strange casket of a heart 
springs-to again; and perhaps there is now no key 
extant that will open it; for a Teufelsdrockh, as we 
remarked, will not love a second time. Singular Dioge- 
nes ! No sooner has that heart-rending occurrence fairly 
taken place, than he affects to regard it as a thing 
natural, of which there is nothing more to be said. ' One 
highest hope, seemingly legible in the eyes of an Angel, 
had recalled him as out of Death-shadows into celestial 
Life: but a gleam of Tophet passed over the face of his 
Angel; he was rapt away in whirlwinds, and heard the 
laughter of Demons. It was a Calenture,' adds he, 
' whereby the Youth saw green Paradise-groves in the 
waste Ocean-waters : a lying vision, yet not wholly a lie, 



134> SARTOR RESARTUS 






for he saw it.' But what things soever passed in him, 
when he ceased to see it; what ragings and despairings 
soever Teufelsdrockh's soul was the scene of, he has 
the goodness to conceal under a quite opaque cover of 
Silence. We know it well; the first mad paroxysm past, 
our brave Gneschen collected his dismembered philoso- 
phies, and buttoned himself together; he was meek, 
silent, or spoke of the weather and the Journals: only 
by a transient knitting of those shaggy brows, by some 
deep flash of those eyes, glancing one knew not whether 
with tear-dew or with fierce fire, — might you have 
guessed what a Gehenna was within; that a whole 
Satanic School were spouting, though inaudibly, there. 
To consume your own cholei , as some c himney.i consume 
their own smoke ; to keep a whole Sata nic School spout- 
ing, if it must spout, inaudibly, is a negative yet no 
slight virtue, nor one of the commonest in these times. 
Nevertheless, we will not take upon us to say, that in 
the strange measure he fell upon, there was not a touch 
of latent Insanity; whereof indeed the actual condition 
of these Documents in Capricornus and Aquarius is no 
bad emblem. His so unlimited Wanderings, toilsome 
enough, are without assigned or perhaps assignable aim; 
internal Unrest seems his sole guidance; he wanders, 
wanders, as if that curse of the Prophet had fallen on 
him, and he were ' made like unto a wheel.' Doubtless, 
too, the chaotic nature of these Paper-bags aggravates 
our obscurity. Quite without note of preparation, for 
example, we come upon the following slip : ' A peculiar 
feeling it is that will rise in the Traveler, when turning 
some hill-range in his desert road, he descries lying far 
below, embosomed among its groves and green natural 
bulwarks, and all diminished to a toybox, the fair Town, 
where so many souls, as it were seen and yet unseen, are 
driving their multifarious traffic. Its white steeple is 



SORROWS OF TECJFELSDROCKH 135 

then truly a starward-pointing finger; the canopy of 
blue smoke seems like a sort of Life-breath: for always, 
of its own unity, the soul gives unity to whatsoever it 
looks on with love; thus does the little Dwellingplace 
of men, in itself a congeries of houses and huts, become 
for us an individual, almost a person. But what thou- 
sand other thoughts unite thereto, if the place has to 
ourselves been the arena of joyous or mournful experi- 
ences; if perhaps the cradle we were rocked in still 
stands there, if our Loving ones still dwell there, if our 
Buried ones there slumber ! ' Does Teufelsdrockh, as 
the wounded eagle is said to make for its own eyrie, and 
indeed military deserters, and all hunted outcast crea- 
tures, turn as if by instinct in the direction of their 
birthland, — fly first, in this extremity, towards his native 
Entepfuhl; but reflecting that there no help awaits him, 
take only one wistful look from the distance, and then 
wend elsewhither ? 

Little happier seems to be his next flight: into the 
wilds of Nature; as if in her mother-bosom he would 
seek healing. So at least we incline to interpret the 
following Notice, separated from the former by some 
considerable space, wherein, however, is nothing note- 
worthy : 

' Mountains were not new to him; but rarely are 
Mountains seen in such combined majesty and grace as 
here. The rocks are of that sort called Primitive by the 
mineralogists, which always arrange themselves in 
masses of a rugged, gigantic character; which rugged- 
ness, however, is here tempered by a singular airiness 
of form, and softness of environment: in a climate favor- 
able to vegetation, the gray cliff, itself covered with 
lichens, shoots-up through a garment of foliage or ver- 
dure; and white, bright cottages, tree-shaded, cluster 
round the everlasting granite. In fine vicissitude, 



136 SARTOR RESARTUS 

Beauty alternates with Grandeur : you ride through stony 
hollows, along strait passes, traversed by torrents, over- 
hung by high walls of rock; now winding amid broken 
shaggy chasms, and huge fragments; now suddenly 
emerging into some emerald valley, where the streamlet 
collects itself into a Lake, and man has again found a 
fair dwelling, and it seems as if Peace had established 
herself in the bosom of Strength. 

' To Peace, however, in this vortex of existence, can 
the Son of Time not pretend: still less if some Specter 
haunt him from the Past; and the Future is wholly a 
Stygian Darkness, specter-bearing. Reasonably might 
the Wanderer exclaim to himself: Are not the gates of 
this world's Happiness inexorably shut against thee; 
hast thou a hope that is not mad? Nevertheless, one 
may still murmur audibly, or in the original Greek if 
that suit thee better : " Whoso can look on Death will 
start at no shadows." 

' From such meditations is the Wanderer's attention 
called outwards; for now the Valley closes-in abruptly, 
intersected by a huge mountain mass, the stony water- 
worn ascent of which is not to be accomplished on horse- 
back. Arrived aloft, he finds himself again lifted into 
the evening sunset light ; and cannot but pause, and gaze 
round him, some moments there. An upland irregular 
expanse of wold, where valleys in complex branchings 
are suddenly or slowly arranging their descent towards 
every quarter of the sky. The mountain-ranges are 
beneath your feet, and folded together: only the loftier 
summits look down here and there as on a second plain; 
lakes also lie clear and earnest in their solitude. No 
trace of man now visible; unless indeed it were he who 
fashioned that little visible link of Highway, here, as 
would seem, scaling the inaccessible, to unite Province 
with Province. But sun-wards, lo you! how it towers 



SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH 137 

sheer up, a world of Mountains, the diadem and cen- 
ter of the mountain region ! A hundred and a hundred 
savage peaks, in the last light of Day; all glowing, of 
gold and amethyst, like giant spirits of the wilderness; 
there in their silence, in their solitude, even as on the 
night when Noah's Deluge first dried! Beautiful, nay 
solemn, was the sudden aspect to our Wanderer. He 
gazed over those stupendous masses with wonder, al- 
most with longing desire; never till this hour had he 
known Nature, that she was One, that she was his 
Mother and divine. And as the ruddy glow was fad- 
ing into clearness in the sky, and the Sun had now de- 
parted, a murmur of Eternity and Immensity, of Death 
and of Life, stole through his soul; and he felt as if 
Death and Life were one, as if the Earth were not dead, 
as if the Spirit of the Earth had its throne in that splen- 
dor, and his own spirit were therewith holding com- 
munion. 

' The spell was broken by a sound of carriage-wheels. 
Emerging from the hidden Northward, to sink soon 
into the hidden Southward, came a gay Barouche-and- 
four: it was open; servants and postillions wore wed- 
ding-favors: that happy pair, then, had found each 
other, it was their marriage evening! Few moments 
brought them near: Du Himmel! It was Herr Tow- 
good and Blumine ! With slight unrecognizing salu- 
tation they passed me; plunged down amid the neigh- 
boring thickets, onwards, to Heaven, and to England; 
and I, in my friend Richter's words, I remained alone, 
behind them, with the Night.' 

Were it not cruel in these circumstances, here might 
be the place to insert an observation, gleaned long ago 
from the great Clothes-Volume, where it stands with 
quite other intent: ' Some time before Small-pox was 
extirpated,' says the Professor, ' there came a new mal- 



138 SARTOR RESARTUS 

ady of the spiritual sort on Europe: I mean the epi- 
demic, now endemical, of View-hunting. Poets of old 
date, being privileged with Senses, had also enjoyed 
external Nature; but chiefly as we enjoy the crystal 
cup which holds good or bad liquor for us; that is to 
say, in silence, or with slight incidental commentary: 
never, as I compute, till after the Sorrows of Werter, 
was there man found who would say: Come let us make 
a Description! Having drunk the liquor, come let us 
eat the glass ! Of which endemic the Jenner is un- 
happily still to seek.' Too true! 

We reckon it more important to remark that the 
Professor's Wanderings, so far as his stoical and cyn- 
ical envelopment admits us to clear insight, here first 
take their permanent character, fatuous or not. That 
Basilisk-glance of the Barouche-and-four seems to have 
withered-up what little remnant of a purpose may have 
still lurked in him: Life has become wholly a dark 
labyrinth; wherein, through long years, our Friend, fly- 
ing from specters, has to stumble about at random, and 
naturally with more haste than progress. 

Foolish were it in us to attempt following him, even 
from afar, in this extraordinary world-pilgrimage of 
his; the simplest record of which, were clear record 
possible, would fill volumes. Hopeless is the obscurity, 
unspeakable the confusion. He glides from country 
to country, from condition to condition; vanishing and 
re-appearing, no man can calculate how or where. 
Through all quarters of the world he wanders, and ap- 
parently through all circles of society. If in any scene, 
perhaps difficult to fix geographically, he settles for a 
time, and forms connections, be sure he will snap them 
abruptly asunder. Let him sink out of sight as Pri- 
vate Scholar (Privatisirender) , living by the grace of 
God in some European capital, you may next find him 



SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH 139 

as Hadjee in the neighborhood of Mecca. It is an in- 
explicable Phantasmagoria, capricious, quick-changing; 
as if our Traveler, instead of limbs and highways, had 
transported himself by some wishing-carpet, or Fortu- 
natus' Hat. The whole, too, imparted emblematically, 
in dim multifarious tokens (as that collection of Street- 
Advertisements) ; with only some touch of direct his- 
torical notice sparingly interspersed: little light-islets 
in the world of haze! So that, from this point, the 
Professor is more of an enigma than ever. In figura- 
tive language, we might say he becomes, not indeed a 
spirit, yet spiritualized, vaporized. Fact unparalleled 
in Biography: The river of his History, which we have 
traced from its tiniest fountains, and hoped to see flow 
onward, with increasing current, into the ocean, here 
dashes itself over that terrific Lover's Leap; and, as a 
mad-foaming cataract, flies wholly into tumultuous 
clouds of spray ! Low down it indeed collects again 
into pools and plashes ; yet only at a great distance, and 
with difficulty, if at all, into a general stream. To cast 
a glance into certain of those pools and plashes, and 
trace whither they run, must, for a chapter or two, form 
the limit of our endeavor. 

For which end doubtless those direct historical No- 
tices, where they can be met with, are the best. Never- 
theless, of this sort too there occurs much, which, with 
our present light, it were questionable to emit. Teu- 
felsdrockh, vibrating everywhere between the highest 
and the lowest levels, comes into contact with public 
History itself. For example, those conversations and 
relations with illustrious Persons, as Sultan Mahmoud, 
the Emperor Napoleon, and others, are they not as yet 
rather of a diplomatic character than of a biographic? 
The Editor, appreciating the sacredness of crowned 
heads, may perhaps suspecting the possible trickeries of 



140 SARTOR RESARTUS 

a Clothes-Philosopher, will eschew this province for the 
present; a new time may bring new insight and a differ- 
ent duty. 

If we ask now, not indeed with what ulterior Purpose, 
for there was none, yet with what immediate outlooks; 
at all events, in what mood of mind, the Professor un- 
dertook and prosecuted this world-pilgrimage, — the an- 
swer is more distinct than favorable. ' A nameless Un- 
rest,' says he, ' urged me forward ; to which the out- 
ward motion was some momentary lying solace. 
Whither should I go? My Loadstars were blotted out; 
in that canopy of grim fire shone no star. Yet forward 
must I; the ground burnt under me; there was no rest 
for the sole of my foot. I was alone, alone! Ever 
too the strong inward longing shaped Fantasms for it- 
self: towards these, one after the other, must I fruit- 
lessly wander. A feeling I had, that for my fever- 
thirst there was and must be somewhere a healing Foun- 
tain. To many fondly imagined Fountains, the Saints' 
Wells of these days, did I pilgrim; to great Men, to 
great Cities, to great Events: but found there no heal- 
ing. In strange countries, as in the well-known; in 
savage deserts, as in the press of corrupt civilization, 
it was ever the same: how could your Wanderer escape 
from — his own Shadow? Nevertheless still Forward! 
I felt as if in great haste; to do I saw not what. From 
the depths of my own heart, it called to me, Forwards ! 
The winds and the streams, and all Nature sounded to 
me, Forwards! Ach Gott, I was even, once for all, a 
Son of Time/ 

From which is it not clear that the internal Satanic 
School was still active enough? He says elsewhere: 
' The Enchiridion of Epictetus I had ever with me, often 
as my sole rational companion; and regret to mention 
that the nourishment it yielded was trifling.' Thou 



SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH 141 

foolish Teuf elsdrockh ! How could it else ? Hadst thou 
not Greek enough to understand thus much: The end 
of Man is an Action, and not a Thought, though it were 
the noblest? 

' How I lived ? ' writes he once : ' Friend, hast thou 
considered the "rugged all-nourishing Earth/' as 
Sophocles well names her; how she feeds the sparrow on 
the house-top much more her darling, man ? While thou 
stirrest and livest, thou hast a probability of victual. 
My breakfast of tea has been cooked by a Tartar woman, 
with water of the Amur, who wiped her earthen kettle 
with a horse-tail. I have roasted wild-eggs in the sand 
of Sahara; I have awakened in Paris Estrapades and 
Vienna Malzleins, with no prospect of breakfast be- 
yond elemental liquid. That I had my Living to seek 
saved me from Dying, — by suicide. In our busy Eu- 
rope, is there not an everlasting demand for Intellect, 
in the chemical, mechanical, political, religious, educa- 
tional, commercial departments? In Pagan countries, 
cannot one write Fetishes? Living! Little knowest 
thou what alchemy is in an inventive Soul; how, as with 
its little finger, it can create provision enough for the 
body (of a Philosopher) ; and then, as with both hands, 
create quite other than provision; namely, specters to 
torment itself withal/ 

Poor Teuf elsdrockh ! Flying with Hunger always 
parallel to him; and a whole Infernal Chase in his rear; 
so that the countenance of Hunger is comparatively a 
friend's ! Thus must he, in the temper of ancient Cain, 
or of the modern Wandering Jew, — save only that he 
feels himself not guilty and but suffering the pains of 
guilt, — wend to and fro with aimless speed. Thus must 
he, over the whole surface of the Earth (by footprints), 
write his Sorrows of Teuf elsdrockh; even as the great 
Goethe, in passionate words, had to write his Sorrows of 



142 SARTOR RESARTUS 

Werter, before the spirit freed herself, and he could be- 
come a Man. Vain truly is the hope of your swiftest 
Runner to escape ' from his own Shadow ' ! Neverthe- 
less, in these sick days, when the Born of Heaven first 
descries himself (about the age of twenty) in a world 
such as ours, richer than usual in two things, in Truths 
grown obsolete, and Trades grown obsolete, — what can 
the fool think but that it is all a Den of Lies, wherein 
whoso will not speak Lies and act Lies, must stand idle 
and despair? Whereby it happens that, for your no- 
bler minds, the publishing of some such Work of Art, 
in one or the other dialect, becomes almost a necessity. 
For what is it properly but an Altercation with the 
Devil, before you begin honestly Fighting him? Your 
Byron publishes his Sorrows of Lord George, in verse 
and in prose, and copiously otherwise: your Bonaparte 
represents his Sorrows of Napoleon Opera, in an ail- 
too stupendous style; with music of cannon-volleys, and 
murder-shrieks of a world; his stage-lights are the fires 
of Conflagration; his rhyme and recitative are the tramp 
of embattled Hosts and the sound of falling Cities.— 
Happier is he who, like our Clothes-Philosopher, can 
write such matter, since it must be written, on the in- 
sensible Earth, with his shoe-soles only; and also sur- 
vive the writing thereof! 



CHAPTER VII 

THE EVERLASTING NO 

Under the strange nebulous envelopment, wherein 
our Professor has now shrouded himself, no doubt but 
his spiritual nature is nevertheless progressive, and 



THE EVERLASTING NO 143 

growing: for how can the 'Son of Time/ in any case, 
stand still? We behold him, through those dim years, 
in a state of crisis, of transition: his mad Pilgrimings, 
and general solution into aimless Discontinuity, what 
is all this but a mad Fermentation; wherefrom, the 
fiercer it is, the clearer product will one day evolve it- 
self? 

Such transitions are ever full of pain: thus the Eagle 
when he molts is sickly; and, to attain his new beak, 
must harshly dash-off the old one upon rocks. What 
Stoicism soever our Wanderer, in his individual acts 
and motions, may affect, it is clear that there is a hot 
fever of anarchy and misery raging within; corusca- 
tions of which flash out: as, indeed, how could there 
be other? Have we not seen him disappointed, be- 
mocked of Destiny, through long years? All that the v 
young heart might desire and pray for has been denied; 
nay, as in the last worst instance, offered and then 
snatched away. Ever an ' excellent Passivity ' ; but of 
useful, reasonable Activity, essential to the former as 
Food to Hunger, nothing granted: till at length, in this 
wild Pilgrimage, he must forcibly seize for himself an 
Activity, though useless, unreasonable/ Alas, his cup 
of bitterness, which had been filling drop by drop, ever 
since that first ' ruddy morning ' in the Hinterschlag 
Gymnasium, was at the very lip; and then with that 
poison-drop, of the Towgood-and-Blumine business, it 
runs over, and even hisses over in a deluge of foam. ^ 

He himself says once, with more justice than original- 
ity: ' Man is, properly speaking, based upon Hope, he 
has no other possession but Hope; this world of his is 
emphatically the ' Place of Hope/ What, then, was our 
Professor's possession? We see him, for the present, 
quite shut-out from Hope; looking not into the golden 



144 SARTOR RESARTUS 






orient^ but vaguely all round into a dim copper firma- 
ment, pregnant with earthquake and tornado. 

Alas, shut-out from Hope, in a deeper sense than we 
yet dream of ! For, as he wanders wearisomely through 
this world, he has now lost all tidings of another and 
higher. Full of religion, or at least of religiosity, as 
our Friend has since exhibited himself, he hides not that, 
in those days, he was wholly irreligious : ' Doubt had 
darkened into Unbelief,' says he ; ' shade after shade 
goes grimly over your soul, till you have the fixed, star- 
less, Tartarean black.' To such readers as have re- 
flected, what can be called reflecting, on man's life, and 
happily discovered, in contradiction to much Profit-and- 
Loss Philosophy, speculative and practical, that Soul is 
not synonymous with Stomach; who understand, there- 
fore, in our Friend's words, ' that, for man's well-being, 
Faith is properly the one thing needful; how, with it, 
Martyrs, otherwise weak, can cheerfully endure the 
shame and the cross; and without it, Worldlings puke- 
up their sick existence, by suicide, in the midst of lux- 
ury ' : to such it will be clear that, for a pure moral na- 
ture, the loss of his religious Belief was the loss of 
everything. Unhappy young man ! All wounds, the 
crush of long-continued Destitution, the stab of false 
Friendship and of false Love, all wounds in thy so 
genial heart, would have healed again, had not its life- 
warmth been withdrawn. Well might he exclaim, in 
his wild way : ' Is there no God, then ; but at best an 
absentee God, sitting idle, ever since the first Sabbath, 
at the outside of his Universe, and seeing it go? Has 
the word Duty no meaning; is what we call Duty no 
divine Messenger and Guide, but a false earthly Fan- 
tasm, made-up of Desire and Fear, of emanations from 
the Gallows and from Doctor Graham's Celestial-Bed? 
Happiness of an approving Conscience! Did not Paul 



THE EVERLASTING NO 145 

of Tarsus,, whom admiring men have since named Saint, 
feel that he was " the chief of sinners " ; and Nero of 
Rome, jocund in spirit {Wohlgemuth) , spend much of 
his time in fiddling? Foolish Wordmonger and Motive- 
grinder, who in thy Logic-mill hast an earthly mechan- 
ism for the Godlike itself, and wouldst fain grind me 
out Virtue from the husks of Pleasure,— I tell thee, 
Nay! To the unregenerate Prometheus Vinctus of a 
man, it is ever the bitterest aggravation of his wretched- 
ness that he is conscious of Virtue, that he feels him- 
self the victim not of suffering only, but of injustice. 
What then? /Is the heroic inspiration we name Virtue 
but some Passion; some bubble of the blood, bubbling 
in the direction others profit by?' I know not: only this 
I know, If what thou namest Happiness be our true 
aim, then are we all astray. With Stupidity and sound 
Digestion man may front much. But what, in these 
dull unimaginative days, are the terrors of Conscience 
to the diseases of the Liver! Not on Morality, but 
on Cookery, let us build our stronghold: there brandish- 
ing our frying-pan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense 
to the Devil, and live at ease on the fat things he has 
provided for his Elect ! ' 

Thus has the bewildered Wanderer to stand, as so 
many have done, shouting question after question into 
the Sibyl-cave of Destiny, and receive no Answer but 
an Echo. It is all a grim Desert, this once-fair world 
of his ; wherein is heard only the howling of wild-beasts, 
or the shrieks of despairing, hate-filled men; and no 
Pillar of Cloud by day, and no Pillar of Fire by night, 
any longer guides the Pilgrim. To such length has the 
spirit of Inquiry carried him. ' But what boots it {was 
thut's) ? ' cries he: ' it is but the common lot in this era. 
Not having come to spiritual majority prior to the 
Steele de Louis Quinze, and not being born purely a 



t^ 



146 SARTOR RESARTUS 

Loghead (Dummkopf) , thou hadst no other outlook. 
The whole world is, like thee, sold to Unbelief; their 
old Temples of the Godhead, which for long have not 
been rainproof, crumble down ; and men ask now : Where 
is the Godhead; our eyes never saw him? ' 

Pitiful enough were it, for all these wild utterances, 
to call our Diogenes wicked. Unprofitable servants as 
we all are, perhaps at no era of his life was he more 
decisively the Servant of Goodness, the Servant of God, 
than even now when doubting God's existence. ' One 
circumstance I note/ says he : ' after all the nameless 
woe that Inquiry, which for me, what it is not always, 
was genuine Love of Truth, had wrought me, I never- 
theless still loved Truth, and would bate no jot of my 
allegiance to her. " Truth ! " I cried, " though the 
Heavens crush me for following her: no Falsehood! 
though a whole celestial Lubberland were the price of 
Apostasy." In conduct it was the same. Had a divine 
Messenger from the clouds, or miraculous Handwrit- 
ing on the wall, convincingly proclaimed to me This 
thou shalt do, with what passionate readiness, as I often 
thought, would I have done it, had it been leaping into 
the infernal Fire. Thus, in spite of all Motive-grind- 
ers, and Mechanical Profit-and-Loss Philosophies, with 
the sick ophthalmia and hallucination they had brought 
on, was the Infinite nature of Duty still dimly present 
to me: living without God in the world, of God's light 
I was not utterly bereft; if my as yet sealed eyes, with 
their unspeakable longing, could nowhere see Him, nev- 
ertheless in my heart He was present, and His heaven- 
written Law still stood legible and sacred there/ 

Meanwhile, under all these tribulations, and temporal 
and spiritual destitutions, what must the Wanderer, in 
his silent soul, have endured ! ' The painfullest feel- 
ing/ writes he, 'is that of your own Feebleness (JJn- 



THE EVERLASTING NO 147 

hraft) ; ever, as the English Milton says, to be weak is 
the true misery. And yet of your Strength there is and 
can be no clear feeling, save by what you have pros- 
pered in, by what you have done. Between vague wav- 
ering Capability and fixed indubitable Performance, 
what a difference! A certain inarticulate Self -con- 
sciousness dwells dimly in us; which only our Works 
can render articulate and decisively discernible. Our 
Works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees its 
natural lineaments. Hence, too, the folly of that im- 
possible Precept, Know thyself; till it be translated into 
this partially possible one, Know what thou canst work 
at. 

' But for me, so strangely unprosperous had I been, 
the net-result of my Workings amounted as yet simply 
to — Nothing. How then could I believe in my Strength, 
when there was as yet no mirror to see it in? Ever 
did this agitating, yet, as I now perceive, quite frivolous 
question, remain to me insoluble: Hast thou a certain 
Faculty, a certain Worth, such even as the most have 
not; or art thou the completest Dullard of these mod- 
ern times? Alas, the fearful Unbelief is unbelief in 
yourself; and how could I believe? Had not my first, 
last Faith in myself, when even to me the Heavens 
seemed laid open, and I dared to love, been ail-too cru- 
elly belied? The speculative Mystery of Life grew 
ever more mysterious to me: neither in the practical 
Mystery had I made the slightest progress, but been 
everywhere buffeted, foiled, and contemptuously cast 
out. A feeble unit in the middle of a threatening In- 
finitude, I seemed to have nothing given me but eyes, 
whereby to discern my own wretchedness. Invisible 
yet impenetrable walls, as of Enchantment, divided me 
from all living: was there, in the wide world, any true 
bosom I could press trustfully to mine? O Heaven, 



148 SARTOR RESARTUS 

No, there was none! I kept a lock upon my lips: why 
should I speak much with that shifting variety of so- 
called Friends, in whose withered, vain and too-hungry 
souls Friendship was but an incredible tradition? In 
such cases, your resource is to talk little, and that little 
mostly from the Newspapers. Now when I look back, 
it was a strange isolation I then lived in. The men 
and women around me, even speaking with me, were 
but Figures; I had, practically, forgotten that they 
were alive, that they were not merely automatic. In the 
midst of their crowded streets and assemblages, I 
walked solitary; and (except as it was my own heart, 
not another's, that I kept devouring) savage also, as 
the tiger in his jungle. Some comfort it would have 
been, could I, like a Faust, have fancied myself tempted 
and tormented of the Devil; for a Hell, as I imagine, 
without Life, though only diabolic Life, were more 
frightful : but in our age of Down-pulling and Disbelief, 
the very Devil has been pulled down, you cannot so 
much as believe in a Devil. To me the Universe was 
all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hos- 
tility: it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-en- 
y "*gine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me 
\ limb from limb. O, the vast, gloomy, solitary Gol- 
gotha, and Mill of Death! Why was the Living ban- 
ished thither companionless, conscious? Why, if there 
is no Devil; nay, unless the Devil is your God? ' 

A prey incessantly to such corrosions, might not, 
moreover, as the worst aggravation to them, the iron cor* 
stitution even of a Teufelsdrockh threaten to fail? We 
conjecture that he has known sickness; and, in spite of 
his locomotive habits, perhaps sickness of the chronic 
sort. Hear this, for example : ' How beautiful to die 
of broken-heart, on Paper! Quite another thing in 
practise; every window of your Feeling, even of your 



THE EVERLASTING NO 149 

Intellect, as it were, begrimed and mud-bespattered, so 
that no pure ray can enter; a whole Drugshop in your 
inwards; the fordone soul drowning slowly in quag- 
mires of Disgust ! ' 

Putting all which external and internal miseries to- 
gether, may we not find in the following sentences, quite 
in our Professor's still vein, significance enough? 
' From Suicide a certain aftershine (Nachschein) of 
Christianity withheld me: perhaps also a certain in- 
dolence of character; for, was not that a remedy I had 
at any time within reach ? Often, however, was there 
a question present to me: Should some one now, at the 
turning of that corner, blow thee suddenly out of Space, 
into the other World, or other No-world, by pistol-shot, 
— how were it? On which ground, too, I often, in sea- 
storms and sieged cities and other death-scenes, ex- 
hibited an imperturbability, which passed, falsely ^-"" 
enough, for courage.' 

' So had it lasted,' concludes the Wanderer, ' so had 
it lasted, as in bitter protracted Death-agony, through 
long years. The heart within me, unvisited by any 
heavenly dew-drop was smoldering in sulphurous, slow- 
consuming fire. Almost since earliest memory I had 
shed no tear; or once only when I, murmuring half- 
audibly, recited Faust's Death-song, that wild Selig der 
den er im Siegesglanze findet (Happy whom he finds in 
Battle's splendor), and thought that of this last Friend 
even I was not forsaken, that Destiny itself could not 
doom me not to die. Having no hope, neither had I 
any definite fear, were it of Man or of Devil: nay, I 
often felt as if it might be solacing, could the Arch- 
Devil himself, though in Tartarean terrors, but rise to 
me, that I might tell him a little of my mind. And yet, 
strangely enough, I lived in a continual, indefinite, pin- 
ing fear; tremulous, pusillanimous, apprehensive of I 



150 SARTOR RESART US 

knew not what; it seemed as if all things in the Heav- 
ens above and the Earth beneath would hurt me; as if 
the Heavens and the Earth were but boundless jaws of 
a devouring monster, wherein I, palpitating, waited to 
be devoured. 

' Full of such humor, and perhaps the miserablest 
man in the whole French Capital or Suburbs, was I, 
one sultry Dog-day, after much perambulation, toiling 
along the dirty little Rue Saint-Thomas de VEnfer, 
among civic rubbish enough, in a close atmosphere, and 
over pavements hot as Nebuchadnezzar's Furnace; 
whereby doubtless my spirits were little cheered; when, 
all at once, there rose a Thought in me, and I asked 
myself: "What art thou afraid of? Wherefore, like a 
coward, dost thou forever pip and whimper, and go 
cowering and trembling? Despicable biped! what is 
the sum-total of the worst that lies before thee ? Death ? 
Well, Death; and say the pangs of Tophet too, and 
all that the Devil and Man may, will or can do against 
thee ! Hast thou not a heart ; canst thou not suffer 
whatsoever it be; and, as a Child of Freedom, though 
outcast, trample Tophet itself under thy feet, while it 
consumes thee? Let it come, then; I will meet it and 
defy it ! " And as I so thought, there rushed like a 
stream of fire over my whole soul; and I shook base 
Fear away from me forever. I was strong, of unknown 
strength; a spirit, almost a god. Ever from that time, 
the temper of my misery was changed: not Fear or 
whining Sorrow was it, but Indignation and grim fire- 
eyed Defiance. 

' Thus had the Everlasting No {das ewige Neiii) 
pealed authoritatively through all the recesses of my 
Being, of my Me; and then was it that my whole Me 
stood up, in native God-created majesty, and with em- 
phasis recorded its Protest. Such a Protest, the most 



CENTER OF INDIFFERENCE 151 

important transaction in Life, may that same Indigna- 
tion and Defiance, in a psychological point of view, be 
fitly called. The Everlasting No had said: "Behold, 
thou art fatherless, outcast, and the Universe is mine 
(the Devil's) "; to which my whole Me now made an- 
swer : " I am not thine, but Free, and forever hate 
thee!" 

' It is from this hour that I incline to date my Spir- 
itual New-birth, or Baphometic Fire-baptism; perhaps 
I directly thereupon began to be a Man/ 



CHAPTER VIII 

CENTER OF INDIFFERENCE 

Though, after this ' Baphometic Fire-baptism ' of 
his, our Wanderer signifies that his Unrest was but in- 
creased ; as, indeed, ' Indignation and Defiance,' espe- 
cially against things in general, are not the most peace- 
able inmates; yet can the Psychologist surmise that it 
was no longer a quite hopeless Unrest; that henceforth 
it had at least a fixed center to revolve round. For the 
fire-baptized soul, long so scathed and thunder-riven, 
here feels its own Freedom, which feeling is its Bapho- 
metic Baptism: the citadel of its whole kingdom it has 
thus gained by assault, and will keep inexpugnable; 
outwards from which the remaining dominions, not in- 
deed without hard battling, will doubtless by degrees be 
conquered and pacificated. Under another figure, we 
might say, if in that great moment, in the Rue Saint- 
Thomas de VEnfer, the old inward Satanic School was 
not yet thrown out of doors, it received peremptory ju- 
dicial notice to quit; — whereby, for the rest, its howl- 



152 SARTOR RESARTUS 

chantings, Ernulphus-cursings, and rebellious gnashings 
of teeth, might, in the meanwhile, become only the more 
tumultuous, and difficult to keep secret. 

Accordingly, if we scrutinize these Pilgrimings well, 
there is perhaps discernible henceforth a certain in- 
cipient method in their madness. Not wholly as a Spec- 
ter does Teufelsdrockh now storm through the world; 
at worst as a specter-fighting Man, nay who will one 
day be a Specter-queller. If pilgriming restlessly to 
so many ' Saints' Wells/ and ever without quenching 
of his thirst, he nevertheless finds little secular wells, 
whereby from time to time some alleviation is minis- 
tered. In a word, he is now, if not ceasing, yet inter- 
mitting to ' eat his own heart ' ; and clutches round him 
outwardly on the Not-me for wholesomer food. Does 
not the following glimpse exhibit him in a much more 
natural state? 

' Towns also and Cities, especially the ancient, I 
failed not to look upon with interest. How beautiful 
to see thereby, as through a long vista, into the remote 
Time; to have as it were, an actual section of almost 
the earliest Past brought safe into the Present, and set 
before your eyes ! There, in that old City, was a live 
ember of Culinary Fire put down, say only two-thou- 
sand years ago; and there, burning more or less tri- 
umphantly, with such fuel as the region yielded, it has 
burnt, and still burns, and thou thyself seest the very 
smoke thereof. Ah! and the far more mysterious live 
ember of Vital Fire was then also put down there; and 
still miraculously burns and spreads ; and the smoke and 
ashes thereof (in these Judgment-Halls and Church- 
yards), and its bellows-engines (in these Churches), 
thou still seest; and its flame, looking out from every 
kind countenance, and every hateful one, still warms 
thee or scorches thee. 



CENTER OF INDIFFERENCE 153 

' Of Man's Activity and Attainment the chief results 
are aeriform, mystic, and preserved in Tradition only: 
such are his Forms of Government, with the Authority 
they rest on; his Customs, or Fashions both of Cloth- 
habits and of Soul-habits ; much more his collective stock 
of Handicrafts, the whole Faculty he has acquired of 
manipulating Nature: all these things, as indispensable 
and priceless as they are, cannot in any way be fixed 
under lock and key, but must flit, spirit-like, on im- 
palpable vehicles, from Father to Son; if you demand 
sight of them, they are nowhere to be met with. Vis- 
ible Plowmen and Hammermen there have been, ever 
from Cain and Tubalcain downwards: but where does 
your accumulated Agricultural, Metallurgic, and other 
Manufacturing Skill lie warehoused? It transmits it- 
self on the atmospheric air, on the sun's rays (by Hear- 
ing and by Vision) ; it is a thing aeriform, impalpable, 
of quite spiritual sort. In like manner, ask me not, 
Where are the Laws; where is the Government? In 
vain wilt thou go to Schonbrunn, to Downing Street, 
to the Palais Bourbon: thou findest nothing there but 
brick or stone houses, and some bundles of Papers tied 
with tape. Where, then, is that same cunningly-devised 
almighty Government of theirs to be laid hands on? 
Everywhere, yet nowhere: seen only in its works, this 
too is a thing aeriform, invisible; or if you will, mystic 
and miraculous. So spiritual (geistig) is our whole 
daily Life: all that we do springs out of Mystery, 
Spirit, invisible Force; only like a little Cloud-image, 
or Armida's Palace, air-built, does the Actual body itself 
forth from the great mystic Deep. 

' Visible and tangible products of the Past, again, I 
reckon-up to the extent of three. Cities, with their Cab- 
inets and Arsenals; then tilled Fields, to either or to 
both of which divisions Roads with their Bridges, may 



f 5 4 SARTOR RESARTUS 

belong; and thirdly Books. In which third truly, 

the last invented, lies a worth far surpassing that of 
the two others. Wondrous indeed is the virtue of a true 
Book. Not like a dead city of stones, yearly crumbling, 
yearly needing repair; more like a tilled field, but then 
a spiritual field: like a spiritual tree, let me rather say, 
it stands from year to year, and from age to age (we 
have Books that already number some hundred-and- 
fifty human ages) ; and yearly comes its new produce 
of leaves (Commentaries, Deductions, Philosophical, Po- 
litical Systems; or were it only Sermons, Pamphlets, 
Journalistic Essays), every one of which is talismanic 
and thaumaturgic, for it can persuade men. O thou 
who art able to write a Book, which once in the two 
centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not 
him whom they name City-builder, and inexpressibly 
pity him whom they name Conqueror or City-burner ! 
Thou too art a Conqueror and Victor; but of the true 
sort, namely over the Devil: thou too hast built what 
will outlast all marble and metal, and be a wonder- 
bringing City of the Mind, a Temple and Seminary and 
Prophetic Mount, whereto all kindreds of the Earth 
will pilgrim. — Fool! why journeyest thou wearisomely, 
in thy antiquarian fervor, to gaze on the stone pyramids 
of Geeza, or the clay ones of Sacchara? These stand 
there, as I can tell thee, idle and inert, looking over the 
Desert, foolishly enough, for the last three-thousand 
years: but canst thou not open thy Hebrew Bible, then, 
or even Luther's Version thereof ? ' 

No less satisfactory is his sudden appearance not in 
Battle, yet on some Battle-field; which, we soon gather, 
must be that of Wagram; so that here, for once, is a 
certain approximation to distinctiveness of date. Omit- 
ting much, let us impart what follows: 

' Horrible enough ! A whole Marchfeld strewed with 



CENTER OF INDIFFERENCE 155 

shell-splinters, cannon-shot, ruined tumbrils, and dead 
men and horses; stragglers still remaining not so much 
as buried. And those red mold heaps: ay, there lie 
the Shells of Men, out of which all the Life and Virtue 
has been blown; and now are they swept together, and 
crammed-down out of sight, like blown Egg-shells! — 
Did Nature, when she bade the Donau bring down his 
mold-cargoes from the Carinthian and Carpathian 
Heights, and spread them out here into the softest, rich- 
est level,— intend thee, O Marchfeld, for a corn-bear- 
ing Nursery, whereon her children might be nursed; 
or for a Cockpit, wherein they might the more com- 
modiously be throttled and tattered? Were thy three 
broad Highways, meeting here from the ends of Europe, 
made for Ammunition-wagons, then? Were thy Wa- 
grams and Stillfrieds but so many ready-built Case- 
mates, wherein the house of Hapsburg might batter with 
artillery, and with artillery be battered? Konig Ot- 
tokar, amid yonder hillocks, dies under Rodolf's 
truncheon; here Kaiser Franz falls a-swoon under Na- 
poleon's : within which five centuries, to omit the others, 
how has thy breast, fair Plain, been defaced and de- 
filed! The greensward is torn-up and trampled-down ; 
man's fond care of it, his fruit-trees, hedge-rows, and 
pleasant dwellings, blown away with gunpowder; and 
the kind seedfield lies a desolate, hideous Place of Sculls. 
— Nevertheless, Nature is at work; neither shall these 
Powder-Devilkins with their utmost devilry gainsay her: 
but all that gore and carnage will be shrouded-in, ab- 
sorbed into manure; and next year the Marchfeld will 
be green, nay greener. Thrifty unwearied Nature, ever 
out of our great waste educing some little profit of thy 
own, — how dost thou, from the very carcass of the 
Killer, bring Life for the Living! 

' What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the 



156 SARTOR RESARTUS 

net-purport and upshot of war ? To my own knowledge, 
for example, there dwell and toil, in the British village 
of Dumdrudge, usually some five-hundred souls. From 
these, by certain " Natural Enemies " of the French, 
there are successively selected, during the French war, 
say thirty able-bodied men: Dumdrudge, at her own ex- 
pense, has suckled and nursed them: she has, not with- 
out difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and 
even trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, an- 
other build, another hammer, and the weakest can stand 
under thirty stone avoirdupois. Nevertheless, amid 
much weeping and swearing, they are selected; all 
dressed in red; and shipped away, at the public charges, 
some two-thousand miles, or say only to the south of 
Spain; and fed there till wanted. And now to that 
same spot, in the south of Spain, are thirty similar 
French artisans, from a French Dumdrudge, in like 
manner wending: till at length, after infinite effort, the 
two parties come into actual juxtaposition; and Thirty 
stands fronting Thirty, each with a gun in his hand. 
Straightway the word " Fire! " is given: and they blow 
the souls out of one another; and in place of sixty brisk 
useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carcasses, 
which it must bury, and anew shed tears for. Had these 
men any quarrel? Busy as the Devil is, not the small- 
est! They lived far enough apart; were the entirest 
strangers; nay, in so wide a Universe, there was even, 
unconsciously, by Commerce, some mutual helpfulness 
between them. How then? Simpleton! their Gov- 
ernors had fallen-out; and, instead of shooting one an- 
other, had the cunning to make these poor blockheads 
shoot. — Alas, so is it in Deutschland, and hitherto in 
all other lands ; still as of old, " what devilry soever 
Kings do, the Greeks must pay the piper ! " — In that 
fiction of the English Smollet, it is true, the final Cessa- 



CENTER OF INDIFFERENCE 157 

tion of War is perhaps prophetically shadowed forth; 
where the two Natural Enemies, in person, take each a 
Tobacco-pipe, filled with Brimstone ; light the same, and 
smoke in one another's faces, till the weaker gives in: 
but from such predicted Peace-Era, what blood-filled 
trenches, and contentious centuries, may still divide us ! ' 

Thus can the Professor, at least in lucid intervals, 
look away from his own sorrows, over the many-colored 
world, and pertinently enough note what is passing 
there. We may remark, indeed, that for the matter 
of spiritual culture, if for nothing else, perhaps few 
periods of his life were richer than this. Internally ^ 
there is the most momentous instructive Course of Prac- 
tical Philosophy, with Experiments, going on; towards 
the right comprehension of which his Peripatetic habits, 
favorable to Meditation, might help him rather than 
hinder. Externally, again, as he wanders to and fro, 
there are, if for the longing heart little substance, yet 
for the seeing eye sights enough: in these so bound- 
less Travels of his, granting that the Satanic School 
was even partially kept down, what an incredible knowl- 
edge of our Planet, and its Inhabitants and their Works, 
that is to say, of all knowable things, might not Teufels- 
drockh acquire! 

1 I have read in most Public Libraries/ says he, * in- 
cluding those of Constantinople and Samarcand: in most 
Colleges, except the Chinese Mandarin ones, I have 
studied, or seen that there was no studying. Unknown 
Languages have I oftenest gathered from their natural 
repertory, the Air, by my organ of Hearing; Statistics, 
Geographies, Topographies came, through the Eye, al- 
most of their own accord. The ways of Man, how he 
seeks food, and warmth, and protection for himself, 
in most regions, are ocularly known to me. Like the 
great Hadrian, I meted-out much of the terraqueous 



158 SARTOR RESARTUS 

Globe with a pair of Compasses that belonged to my- 
self only. 

' Of great Scenes why speak? Three summer days, 
I lingered reflecting, and even composing (dichtete), 
hy the Pine-chasms of Vaucluse; and in that clear Lake- 
let moistened my bread. I have sat under the Palm- 
trees of Tadmor; smoked a pipe among the ruins of 
Babylon. The great Wall of China I have seen; and 
can testify that it is of gray brick, coped and covered 
with granite, and shows only second-rate masonry. — 
Great Events, also, have not I witnessed? Kings 
sweated-down (ausgemergelt) into Berlin-and-Milan 
Customhouse-Officers; the World well won, and the 
World well lost; oftener than once a hundred-thousand 
individuals shot (by each other) in one day. All kin- 
dreds and peoples and nations dashed together, and 
shifted and shoveled into heaps, that they might ferment 
there, and in time unite. The birth-pangs of Democ- 
racy, wherewith convulsed Europe was groaning in cries 
that reached Heaven, could not escape me. 

' For great Men I have ever had the warmest predilec- 
tion; and can perhaps boast that few such in this era 
have wholly escaped me. Great Men are the inspired 
(speaking and acting) Texts of that divine Book of 
Revelations, whereof a Chapter is completed from 
epoch to epoch, and by some named History; to which 
inspired Texts your numerous talented men, and your 
innumerable untalented men, are the better or worse 
exegetic Commentaries, and wagonload of too-stupid, 
heretical or orthodox, weekly Sermons. For my study, 
the inspired Texts themselves ! Thus did not I, in very 
early days, having disguised me as tavern-waiter, stand 
behind the field-chairs, under that shady Tree at Treis- 
nitz by the Jena Highway; waiting upon the great 



CENTER OF INDIFFERENCE 159 

Schiller and greater Goethe; and hearing what I have 

not forgotten. For * 

But at this point the Editor recalls his principle 



of caution, some time ago laid down, and must suppress 
much. Let not the sacredness of Laureled, still more, 
of Crowned Heads, be tampered with. Should we, at 
a future day, find circumstances altered, and the time 
come "for Publication, then may these glimpses into the 
privacy of the Illustrious be conceded; which for the 
present were little better than treacherous, perhaps 
traitorous Eavesdroppings. Of Lord Byron, therefore, 
of Pope Pius, Emperor Tarakwang, and the ' White 
Water-roses ' (Chinese Carbonari) with their mysteries, 
no notice here! Of Napoleon himself we shall only, 
glancing from afar, remark that Teufelsdrockh's re- 
lation to him seems to have been of very varied char- 
acter. At first we find our poor Professor on the point 
of being shot as a spy; then taken into private con- 
versation, even pinched on the ear, yet presented with 
no money; at last indignantly dismissed, almost thrown 
out of doors, as an ' Ideologist.' ' He himself/ says the 
Professor, ' was among the completest Ideologists, at 
least Ideopraxists : in the Idea (in der Idee) he lived, 
moved and fought. The man was a Divine Mission- 
ary, though unconscious of it; and preached, through 
the cannon's throat, that great doctrine, La carriere 
ouverte aux talens (The Tools to him that can handle 
them), which is our ultimate Political Evangel, wherein 
alone can liberty lie. Madly enough he preached, it is 
true, as Enthusiasts and first Missionaries are wont, 
with imperfect utterance, amid much frothy rant; yet 
as articulately perhaps as the case admitted. Or call 
him, if you will, an American Backwoodsman, who had 
to fell unpenetrated forests, and battle with innumerable 
wolves, and did not entirely forbear strong liquor, riot- 



160 SARTOR RESARTUS 

ing, and even theft; whom, notwithstanding, the peace- 
ful Sower will follow, and, as he cuts the boundless 
harvest, bless.' 

More legitimate and decisively authentic is Teufels- 
drockh's appearance and emergence (we know not well 
whence) in the solitude of the North Cape, on that June 
Midnight. He has a ' light-blue Spanish cloak ' hang- 
ing round him, as his ' most commodious, principal, in- 
deed sole upper-garment ' ; and stands there, on the 
World-promontory, looking over the infinite Brine, like 
a little blue Belfry (as we figure), now motionless in- 
deed, yet ready, if stirred, to ring quaintest changes. 

' Silence as of death/ writes he ; ' for Midnight, even 
in the Arctic latitudes, has its character: nothing but 
the granite cliffs ruddy-tinged, the peaceable gurgle of 
that slow-heaving Polar Ocean, over which in the ut- 
most North the great Sun hangs low and lazy, as if 
he too were slumbering. Yet is his cloud-couch wrought 
of crimson and cloth-of-gold; yet does his light stream 
over the mirror of waters, like a tremulous fire-pillar, 
shooting downwards to the abyss, and hide itself under 
my feet. In such moments, Solitude also is invaluable; 
for who would speak, or be looked on, when behind him 
lies all Europe and Africa, fast asleep, except the 
watchmen ; and before him the silent Immensity, and 
Palace of the Eternal, whereof our Sun is but a porch- 
lamp ? 

' Nevertheless, in this solemn moment comes a man, 
or monster, scrambling from among the rock-hollows; 
and, shaggy, huge as the Hyperborean Bear, hails me 
in Russian speech: most probably, therefore, a Russian 
Smuggler. With courteous brevity, I signify my in- 
difference to contraband trade, my humane intentions, 
yet strong wish to be private. In vain: the monster, 
counting doubtless on his superior stature, and minded 



CENTER OF INDIFFERENCE 161 

to make sport for himself, or perhaps profit, were it 
with murder, continues to advance; ever assailing me 
with his importunate train-oil breath; and now has ad- 
vanced, till we stand both on the verge of the rock, the 
deep Sea rippling greedily down below. What argu- 
ment will avail? On the thick Hyperborean, cherubic 
reasoning, seraphic eloquence were lost. Prepared for 
such extremity, I, deftly enough, whisk aside one step; 
draw out, from my interior reservoirs, a sufficient Bir- 
mingham Horse-pistol, and say, " Be so obliging as 
retire, Friend (Er ziehe sich zuriick, Freund), and 
with promptitude ! " This logic even the Hyperborean 
understands: fast enough, with apologetic, petitionary 
growl, he sidles off; and, except for suicidal as well 
as homicidal purposes, need not return. 

' Such I hold to be the genuine use of Gunpowder: 
that it makes all men alike tall. Nay, if thou be cooler, 
cleverer than I, if thou have more Mind, though all but 
no Body whatever, then canst thou kill me first, and art 
the taller. Hereby, at last, is the Goliath powerless, 
and the David resistless; savage Animalism is nothing, 
inventive Spiritualism is all. 

' With respect to Duels, indeed, I have my own ideas. 
Few things, in this so surprising world, strike me with 
more surprise. Two little visual Spectra of men, hover- 
ing with insecure enough cohesion in the midst of the 
Unfathomable, and to dissolve therein, at any rate, 
very soon, — make pause at the distance of twelve paces 
asunder; whirl round; and, simultaneously by the cun- 
ningest mechanism, explode one another into Dissolu- 
tion; and off-hand become Air, and Non-extant! Deuce 
on it {yerdammt) , the little spitfires ! — Nay, I think 
with old Hugo von Trimberg: "God must needs laugh 
outright, could such a thing be, to see his wondrous 
Manikins here below." ' 



162 SARTOR RESARTUS 

But amid these specialties, let us not forget the great 
generality, which is our chief quest here: How pros- 
pered the inner man of Teufelsdrockh under so much 
outward shifting? Does Legion still lurk in him, 
though repressed; or has he exorcised that Devil's 
Brood? We can answer that the symptoms continue 
promising. Experience is the grand spiritual Doctor; 
and with him Teufelsdrockh has been long a patient, 
swallowing many a bitter bolus. Unless our poor Friend 
belong to the numerous class of Incurables, which seems 
not likely, some cure will doubtless be effected. We 
should rather say that Legion, or the Satanic School, 
was now pretty well extirpated and cast out, but next 
to nothing introduced in its room; whereby the heart 
remains, for the while, in a quiet but no comfortable 
state. 

' At length, after so much roasting/ thus writes our 
Autobiographer, ' I was what you might name calcined. 
Pray only that it be not rather, as is the more frequent 
issue, reduced to a caput-mortuum! But in any case, 
by mere dint of practise, I had grown familiar with 
many things. Wretchedness was still wretched; but I 
could now partly see through it, and despise it. Which 
highest mortal, in this inane Existence, had I not found 
a Shadow-hunter, or Shadow-hunted; and, when I looked 
through his brave garnitures, miserable enough? Thy 
wishes have all been sniffed aside, thought I: but what, 
had they even been all granted! Did not the Boy 
Alexander weep because he had not two Planets to 
conquer; or a whole Solar System; or after that, a 
whole Universe? Ach Gott, when I gazed into these 
Stars, have they not looked-down on me as if with pity, 
from their serene spaces ; like Eyes glistening with heav- 
enly tears over the little lot of man ! Thousands of hu- 
man generations, all as noisy as our own, have been 



THE EVERLASTING YEA 163 

swallowed-up of Time, and there remains no wreck of 
them any more; and Arcturus and Orion and Sirius 
and the Pleiades are still shining in their courses, clear 
and young, as when the Shepherd first noted them in the 
plain of Shinar. Pshaw ! what is this paltry little Dog- 
cage of an Earth; what art thou that sittest whining 
there? Thou art still Nothing, Nobody: true; but who, 
then, is Something, Somebody? For thee the Family 
of Man has no use; it rejects thee; thou art wholly as 
a dissevered limb : so be it ; perhaps it is better so ! ' 

Too-heavy-laden Teuf elsdrockh ! Yet surely his 
bands are loosening; one day he will hurl the burden 
far from him, and bound forth free and with a second 
youth. 

■ This,' says our Professor, ' was the Center of In- 
difference I had now reached; through which whoso 
travels from the Negative Pole to the Positive must 
necessarily pass/ 



CHAPTER IX 

THE EVERLASTING YEA 

' Temptations in the Wilderness I * exclaims Teuf els- 
drockh : ' Have we not all to be tried with such ? Not 
so easily can the old Adam, lodged in us by birth, be 
dispossessed. Our Life is compassed round with Ne- 
cessity; yet is the meaning of Life itself no other than 
Freedom, than Voluntary Force: thus have we a war- 
fare; in the beginning, especially, a hard- fought bat- 
tle. For the God-given mandate, Work thou in Well- 
doing, lies mysteriously written, in Promethean 
Prophetic Characters, in our hearts; and leaves us no 



164 SARTOR RESARTUS 

rest, night or day, till it be deciphered and obeyed; 
till it burn forth, in our conduct, a visible, acted Gos- 
pel of Freedom. And as the clay-given mandate, Eat 
thou and be filled, at the same time persuasively pro- 
claims itself through every nerve, — must not there be 
a confusion, a contest, before the better Influence can 
become the upper? 

' To me nothing seems more natural than that the 
Son of Man, when such God-given mandate first 
prophetically stirs within him, and the Clay must now 
be vanquished or vanquish, — should be carried of the 
spirit into grim Solitudes, and there fronting the 
Tempter do grimmest battle with him; defiantly setting 
him at naught, till he yield and fly. Name it as we 
choose: with or without visible Devil, whether in the 
natural Desert of rocks and sands, or in the populous 
moral Desert of selfishness and baseness, — to such 
Temptation are we all called. Unhappy if we are not! 
Unhappy if we are but Half-men, in whom that divine 
handwriting has never blazed forth, all-subduing, in 
true sun-splendor; but quivers dubiously amid meaner 
lights: or smolders, in dull pain, in darkness, under 
earthly vapors ! — Our Wilderness is the wide World in 
an Atheistic Century; our Forty Days are long years 
of suffering and fasting: nevertheless, to these also 
comes an end. Yes, to me also was given, if not Vic- 
tory, yet the consciousness of Battle, and the resolve 
to persevere therein while life or faculty is left. To 
me also, entangled in the enchanted forests, demon- 
peopled, doleful of sight and of sound, it was given, 
after weariest wanderings, to work out my way into the 
higher sunlight slopes — of that Mountain which has no 
summit, or whose summit is in Heaven only ! ' 

He says elsewhere, under a less ambitious figure; as 
figures are, once for all, natural to him: ' Has not thy 



THE EVERLASTING YEA 165 

Life been that of most sufficient men (tuchtigen Man- 
ner) thou hast known in this generation? An outflush 
of foolish young Enthusiasm, like the first fallow-crop, 
wherein are as many weeds as valuable herbs: this all 
parched away, under the Droughts of practical and 
spiritual Unbelief, as Disappointment, in thought and 
act, often-repeated gave rise to Doubt, and Doubt 
gradually settled into Denial! If I have had a sec- 
ond-crop, and now see the perennial greensward, and sit 
under umbrageous cedars, which defy all Drought (and 
Doubt) ; herein too, be the Heavens praised, I am not 
without examples, and even examplars.' 

So that, for Teufelsdrockh also, there has been a 
' glorious revolution ' : these mad shadow-hunting and 
shadow-hunted Pilgrimings of his were but some puri- 
fying ' Temptation in the Wilderness,' before his apos- 
tolic work (such as it was) could begin; which Tempta- 
tion is now happily over, and the Devil once more 
worsted ! Was ' that high moment in the Rue de 
VEnfer/ then, properly the turning-point of the battle; 
when the Fiend said, Worship me, or be torn in shreds; 
and was answered valiantly with an Apage Satana? — 
Singular Teufelsdrockh, would thou hadst told thy sin- 
gular story in plain words ! But it is fruitless to look 
there, in those Paper-bags, for such. Nothing but in- 
nuendoes, figurative crotchets : a typical Shadow, fitfully 
wavering, prophetico-satiric ; no clear logical Picture. 
' How paint to the sensual eye/ asks he once, ' what 
passes in the Holy-of-Holies of Man's Soul; in what 
words, known to these profane times, speak even afar- 
off of the unspeakable?' We ask in turn: Why per- 
plex these times, profane as they are, with needless 
obscurity, by omission and by commission? Not mys- 
tical only is our Professor, but whimsical; and involves 
himself, now more than ever, in eye-bewildering 



166 SARTOR RESARTUS 

chiaroscuro. Successive glimpses, here faithfully im- 
parted, our more gifted readers must endeavor to com- 
bine for their own behoof. 

He says : ' The hot Harmattan wind had raged itself 
out; its howl went silent within me; and the long-deaf- 
ened soul could now hear. I paused in my wild wan- 
derings; and sat me down to wait, and consider; for it 
was as if the hour of change drew nigh. I seemed to 
surrender, to renounce utterly, and say: Fly, then, false 
shadows of Hope; I will chase you no more, I will be- 
lieve you no more. And ye too, haggard specters of 
Fear, I care not for you; ye too are all shadows and a 
lie. Let me rest here: for I am way-weary and life- 
weary; I will rest here, were it but to die: to die or to 
live is alike to me; alike insignificant.' — And again: 

* Here, then, as I lay in that Center of Indifference ; 
cast, doubtless by benignant upper Influence, into a 
healing sleep, the heavy dreams rolled gradually away, 
and I awoke to a new Heaven and a new Earth. The 
first preliminary moral Act, Annihilation of Self 
(Selbst-todtung) , had been happily accomplished, and 
my mind's eyes were now unsealed, and its hands un- 
gyved.' 

Might we not also conjecture that the following pas- 
sage refers to his Locality, during this same ' healing 
sleep ' ; that his Pilgrim-staff lies cast aside here, on 

* the high table-land ' ; and indeed that the repose is 
already taking wholesome effect on him? If it were 
not that the tone, in some parts, has more of liancy, 
even of levity, than we could have expected! However, 
in Teufelsdrockh, there is always the strangest Dualism: 
light dancing, with guitar-music, will be going on in the 
fore-court, while by fits from within comes the faint 
whimpering of woe and wail. We transcribe the piece 
entire. 



THE EVERLASTING YEA 167 

' Beautiful it was to sit there, as in my skyey Tent, 
musing and meditating; on the high table-land, in front 
of the Mountains; over me, as roof, the azure Dome, 
and around me, for walls, four azure-flowing curtains, 
— namely, of the Four azure Winds, on whose bottom- 
fringes also I have seen gilding. And then to fancy 
the fair Castles that stood sheltered in these Moun- 
tain hollows; with their green flower-lawns, and white 
dames and damosels, lovely enough: or better still, the 
straw-roofed Cottages, wherein stood many a Mother 
baking bread, with her children round her: — all hidden 
and protectingly folded-up in the valley-folds; yet there 
and alive, as sure as if I beheld them. Or to see, as 
well as fancy, the nine Towns and Villages, that lay 
round my mountain-seat, which, in still weather, were 
wont to speak to me (by their steeple-bells) with metal 
tongue; and, in almost all weather, proclaimed their 
vitality by repeated Smoke-clouds; whereon, as on a 
culinary horologe, I might read the hour of the day. 
For it was the smoke of cookery, as kind housewives 
at morning, midday, eventide, were boiling their hus- 
bands' kettles; and ever a blue pillar rose up into the 
air, successively or simultaneously, from each of the 
nine, saying, as plainly as smoke could say: Such and 
such a meal is getting ready here. Not uninteresting! 
For you have the whole Borough, with all its love-mak- 
ings and scandal-mongeries, contentions and content- 
ments, as in miniature, and could cover it all with your 
hat. — If, in my wide Wayfarings, I had learned to look 
into the business of the World in its details, here per- 
haps was the place for combining it into general propo- 
sitions, and deducing inferences therefrom. 

' Often also could I see the black Tempest marching 
in anger through the Distance: round some Schreckhorn, 
as yet grim-blue, would the eddying vapor gather, and 



168 SARTOR RESARTUS 

there tumultuously eddy, and flow down like a mad 
witch's hair; till, after a space, it vanished, and, in the 
clear sunbeam, your Schreckhorn stood smiling grim- 
white, for the vapor had held snow. How thou fer- 
mentest and elaboratest, in thy great fermenting-vat 
and laboratory of an Atmosphere, of a World, O Na- 
ture ! — Or what is Nature ? Ha ! why do I not name 
thee God ? Art not thou the " Living Garment of 
God " ? O Heavens, is it, in very deed, He, then, that 
ever speaks through thee; that lives and loves in thee, 
that lives and loves in me? 

' Fore-shadows, call them rather fore-splendors, of 
that Truth, and Beginning of Truths, fell mysteriously 
over my soul. Sweeter than Dayspring to the Ship- 
wrecked in Nova Zembla; ah, like the mother's voice to 
her little child that strays bewildered, weeping, in un- 
known tumults; like soft streamings of celestial music 
to my too-exasperated heart, came that Evangel. The 
Universe is not dead and demoniacal, a charnel-house 
with specters ; but godlike, and my Father's ! 

1 With other eyes, too, could I now look upon my 
fellow man: with an infinite Love, an infinite Pity. 
Poor, wandering, wayward man! Art thou not tried, 
and beaten with stripes, even as I am? Ever, whether 
thou bear the royal mantle or the beggar's gabardine, 
art thou not so weary, so heavy-laden; and thy Bed of 
Rest is but a Grave. O my Brother, my Brother, why 
cannot I shelter thee in my bosom, and wipe away all 
tears from thy eyes ! — Truly, the din of many-voiced 
Life, which, in this solitude, with the mind's organ, I 
could hear, was no longer a maddening discord, but a 
melting one; like inarticulate cries, and sobbings of a 
dumb creature, which in the ear of Heaven are prayers. 
The poor Earth, with her poor joys, was now my needy 
Mother, not my cruel Stepdame; Man, with his so mad 



THE EVERLASTING YEA 169 

Wants and so mean Endeavors, had become the dearer 
to me; and even for his sufferings and his sins, I now 
first named him Brother. Thus was I standing in the 
porch of that " Sanctuary of Sorrow " ; by strange, steep 
ways had I too been guided thither ; and ere long its 
sacred gates would open, and the ee Divine Depth of 
Sorrow " lie disclosed to me.' 

The Professor says, he here first got eye on the Knot 
that had been strangling him, and straightway could 
unfasten it, and was free. ' A vain interminable con- 
troversy,' writes he, ' touching what is at present called 
Origin of Evil, or some such thing, arises in every soul, 
since the beginning of the world; and in every soul, that 
would pass from idle Suffering into actual Endeavoring, 
must first be put an end to. The most, in our time, 
have to go content with a simple, incomplete enough 
Suppression of this controversy; to a few some Solution 
of it is indispensable. In every new era, too, such 
Solution comes-out in different terms ; and ever the Solu- 
tion of the last era has become obsolete, and is found 
unserviceable. For it is man's nature to change his 
Dialect from century to century; he cannot help it 
though he would. The authentic Church-Catechism of 
our present century has not yet fallen into my hands: 
meanwhile, for my own private behoof, I attempt to 
elucidate the matter so. Man's Unhappiness as I con- 
strue, comes of his Greatness; it is because there is an 
Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot 
quite bury under the Finite. Will the whole Finance 
Ministers and Upholsterers and Confectioners of mod- 
ern Europe undertake, in joint-stock company, to make 
one Shoeblack happy? They cannot accomplish it, 
above an hour or two: for the Shoeblack also has a Soul 
quite other than his Stomach; and would require, if 
you consider it, for his permanent satisfaction and sat- 



170 SARTOR RESARTUS 

uration, simply this allotment, no more, and no less: 
God's infinite Universe altogether to himself, therein to 
enjoy infinitely, and fill every wish as fast as it rose. 
Oceans of Hochheimer, a Throat like that of Ophiuchus : 
speak not of them; to the infinite Shoeblack they are as 
nothing. No sooner is your ocean filled, than he grum- 
bles that it might have been of better vintage. Try him 
with half of a Universe, of an Omnipotence, he sets to 
quarreling with the proprietor of the other half, and 
declares himself the most maltreated of men. — Always 
there is a black spot in our sunshine: it is even, as I 
said, the Shadow of Ourselves. 

' But the whim we have of Happiness is somewhat 
thus. By certain valuations, and averages, of our own 
striking, we come upon some sort of average terrestrial 
lot; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and of in- 
defeasible right. It is simple payment of our wages, of 
our deserts; requires neither thanks nor complaint; only 
such overplus as there may be do we account Happi- 
ness; any deficit again is Misery. Now consider that 
we have the valuation of our own deserts ourselves, and 
what a fund of Self-conceit there is in each of us, — 
do you wonder that the balance should so often dip the 
wrong way, and many a Blockhead cry: See there, 
what a payment; was ever worthy gentleman so used! 
— I tell thee, Blockhead, it all comes of thy Vanity; of 
what thou fanciest those same deserts of thine to be. 
Fancy that thou deservest to be hanged (as is most 
likely), thou wilt feel it happiness to be only shot: fancy 
that thou deservest to be hanged in a hair-halter, it will 
be a luxury to die in hemp. 

' So true is it, what I then said, that the Fraction of 
Life can be increased in value not so much by increasing 
your Numerator as by lessening your Denominator. 
Nay, unless my Algebra deceive me, Unity itself di- 



THE EVERLASTING YEA 171 

vided by Zero will give Infinity. Make thy claim of 
wages a zero, then; thou hast the world under thy feet. 
Well did the Wisest of our time write: " It is only with 
Renunciation (Entsagen) that Life, properly speaking, 
can be said to begin.'"' 

' I asked myself : What is this that, ever since earliest 
years, thou hast been fretting and fuming, and lament- 
ing and self-tormenting, on account of? Say it in a 
word: is it not because thou art not happy? Because 
the Thou (sweet gentleman) is not sufficiently honored, 
nourished, soft-bedded, and lovingly cared- for? Fool- 
ish soul! What Act of Legislature was there that thou 
shouldst be Happy? A little while ago thou hadst no 
right to be at all. What if thou wert born and predes- 
tined not to be Happy, but to be Unhappy! Art thou 
nothing other than a Vulture, then, that fliest through 
the Universe seeking after somewhat to eat ; and shriek- 
ing dolefully because carrion enough is not given thee? 
Close thy Byron; open thy Goethe/ | 

' Es leuchtet mir ein, I see a glimpse of it ! ' cries he 
elsewhere : ' there is in man a Higher than Love of 
Happiness: he can do without Happiness, and instead 
thereof find Blessedness ! Was it not to preach-forth 
this same Higher that sages and martyrs, the Poet and 
the Priest, in all times, have spoken and suffered; bear- 
ing testimony, through life and through death, of the 
Godlike that is in Man, and how in the Godlike only has 
he Strength and Freedom? Which God-inspired Doc- 
trine art thou also honored to be taught ; O Heavens ! 
and broken with manifold merciful Afflictions, even till 
thou become contrite, and learn it! O, thank thy Des- 
tiny for these; thankfully bear what yet remain: thou 
hadst need of them; the Self in thee needed to be an- 
nihilated. By benignant fever-paroxysms is Life root- 
ing out the deep-seated chronic Disease, and triumphs 



172 SARTOR RESARTUS 

over Death. On the roaring billows of Time, thou art 
not engulfed, but borne aloft into the azure of Eternity. 
Love not Pleasure; love God. This is the Everlasting 
Yea, wherein all contradiction is solved: wherein whoso 
walks and works, it is well with him/ 

And again : ' Small is it that thou canst trample the 
Earth with its injuries under thy feet, as old Greek 
Zeno trained thee: thou canst love the Earth while it 
injures thee, and even because it injures thee; for this 
a Greater than Zeno was needed, and he too was sent. 
Knowest thou that " Worship of Sorrow "f The Tem- 
ple thereof, founded some eighteen centuries ago, now 
lies in ruins, overgrown with jungle, the habitation of 
doleful creatures: nevertheless, venture forward, in a 
low crypt, arched out of falling fragments, thou find- 
est the Altar still there, and its sacred Lamp perennially 
burning.' 

Without pretending to comment on which strange ut- 
terances, the Editor will only remark, that there lies 
beside them much of a still more questionable character; 
unsuited to the general apprehension; nay wherein he 
himself does not see his way. Nebulous disquisitions 
on Religion, yet not without bursts of splendor; on the 
'perennial continuance of Inspiration'; on Prophecy; 
that there are ' true Priests, as well as Baal-Priests, 
in our own day ' : with more of the like sort. We select 
some fractions, by way of finish to this farrago. 

' Cease, my much-respected Herr von Voltaire,' thus 
apostrophizes the Professor: 'shut thy sweet voice; 
for the task appointed thee seems finished. Sufficiently 
hast thou demonstrated this proposition, considerable or 
otherwise: That the Mythus of the Christian Religion 
looks not in the eighteenth century as it did in the 
eighth. Alas, were thy six-and-thirty quartos, and the 
six-and-thirty thousand other quartos and folios, and 



THE EVERLASTING YEA 173 

flying sheets or reams, printed before and since on the 
same subject, all needed to convince us of so little! 
But what next ? Wilt thou help us to embody the divine 
Spirit of that Religion in a new Mythus, in a new ve- 
hicle and vesture, that our Souls, otherwise too like per- 
ishing, may live? What! thou hast no faculty in that 
kind? Only a torch for burning, no hammer for build- 
ing? Take our thanks, then, and thyself away. 

1 Meanwhile what are antiquated Mythuses to me? Or 
is the God present, felt in my own heart, a thing which 
Herr von Voltaire will dispute out of me ; or dispute into 
me ? To the " Worship of Sorrow " ascribe what origin 
and genesis thou pleasest, has not that Worship orig- 
inated, and been generated; is it not here? Feel it in 
thy heart, and then say whether it is of God! This is 
Belief; all else is Opinion, — for which latter whoso 
will, let him worry and be worried.' 

' Neither,' observes he elsewhere, ' shall ye tear-out 
one another's eyes, struggling over " Plenary Inspira- 
tion," and such-like: try rather to get a little even Par- 
tial Inspiration, each of you for himself. One Bible 
I know, of whose Plenary Inspiration doubt is not so 
much as possible; nay with my own eyes I saw the 
God's-Hand writing it: thereof all other Bibles are but 
Leaves, — say, in Picture-Writing to assist the weaker 
faculty.' 

Or, to give the wearied reader relief, and bring it to 
an end, let him take the following perhaps more in- 
telligible passage: 

' To me, in this our life,' says the Professor, ' which 
is an internecine warfare with the Time-spirit, other 
warfare seems questionable. Hast thou in any way a 
Contention with thy brother, I advise thee, think well 
what the meaning thereof is. If thou gauge it to the 
bottom, it is simply this : " Fellow, see ! thou art taking 




174 SARTOR RESARTUS 

more than thy share of Happiness in the world, some- 
thing from my share: which, by the Heavens, thou shalt 
not; nay I will fight thee rather." — Alas, and the whole 
lot to be divided is such a beggarly matter, truly a 
" feast of shells," for the substance has been spilled 
out: not enough to quench one Appetite; and the col- 
lective human species clutching at them ! — Can we not, 
in all such cases, rather say: "Take it, thou too-raven- 
ous individual; take that pitiful additional fraction of 
a share, which I reckoned mine, but which thou so want- 
est; take it with a blessing: would to Heaven I had 
enough for thee!" — If Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre be, 
" to a certain extent, Applied Christianity," surely to a 
still greater extent, so is this. We have here not a 
Whole Duty of Man, yet a Half Duty, namely the Pas- 
sive half: could we but do it, as we can demonstrate it! 

' But indeed Conviction, were it never so excellent, 
is worthless till it convert itself into Conduct. Nay 
properly Conviction is not possible till then; inasmuch 
as all Speculation is by nature endless, formless, a vor- 
tex amid vortices: only by a felt indubitable certainty 
of Experience does it find any center to revolve round, 
and so fashion itself into a system. Most true is it, as 
a wise man teaches us, that " Doubt of any sort cannot 
be removed except by Action." On which ground, too, 
let him who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain 
light, and prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen 
into day, lay this other precept well to heart, which to 
me was of invaluable service : " Do the Duty which lies 
nearest thee/* which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy 
second Duty will already have become clearer. 

' May we not say, however, that the hour of Spiritual 
Enfranchisement is even this: When your Ideal World, 
wherein the whole man has been dimly struggling and 
inexpressibly languishing to work, becomes revealed, and 



THE EVERLASTING YEA 175 

thrown open ; and you discover, with amazement enough, 
like the Lothario in Wilhelm Meister, that your " Amer- 
ica is here or nowhere " ? The Situation that has not its 
Duty, its Ideal, was never yet occupied by man. Yes 
here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable Ac- 
tual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere 
is thy Ideal: work it out therefrom; and working, be- 
lieve, live, be free. Fool! the Ideal is in thyself, the 
impediment too is in thyself: thy Condition is but the 
stuff" thou art to shape that same Ideal out of: what mat- 
ters whether such stuff" be of this sort or that, so the 
Form thou give it be heroic, be poetic? O thou that 
pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest 
bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and 
create, know this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is 
already with thee, " here or nowhere," couldst thou 
only see! 

' But it is with man's Soul as it was with Nature: 
the beginning of Creation is — Light. Till the eye have 
vision, the whole members are in bonds. Divine mo- 
ment, when over the tempest-tossed Soul, as once over 
the wild- weltering Chaos, it is spoken: Let there be 
Light! Ever to the greatest that has felt such mo- 
ment, is it not miraculous and God-announcing; even 
as, under simpler figures, to the simplest and least. 
The mad primeval Discord is hushed; the rudely-jum- 
bled conflicting elements bind themselves into separate 
Firmaments: deep silent rock-foundations are built be- 
neath; and the skyey vault with its everlasting Lumi- 
naries above: instead of a dark wasteful Chaos, we 
have a blooming, fertile, heaven-encompassed World. 

' I too could now say to myself: Be no longer a Chaos, 
but a World, or even Worldkin. Produce! Produce! 
Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a 
Product, produce it, in God's name! 'Tis the utmost 



176 SARTOR RESARTUS 

thou hast in thee: out with it, then. Up, up! What- 
soever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole 
might. Work while it is called To-day; for the Night 
cometh, wherein no man can work.' 



CHAPTER X 

PAUSE 

Thus have we, as closely and perhaps satisfactorily 
as, in such circumstances, might be, followed Teufels- 
drockh through the various successive states and stages 
of Growth, Entanglement, Unbelief, and almost Repro- 
bation, into a certain clearer state of what he himself 
seems to consider as Conversion. ' Blame not the word/ 
says he; ' rejoice rather that such a word, signifying 
such a thing, has come to light in our modern Era, 
though hidden from the wisest Ancients. The Old 
World knew nothing of Conversion; instead of an Ecce 
Homo, they had only some Choice of Hercules. It was 
a new-attained progress in the Moral Development of 
man: hereby has the Highest come home to the bosoms 
of the most Limited; what to Plato was but a hallucina- 
tion, and to Socrates a chimera, is now clear and cer- 
tain to your Zinzendorfs, your Wesleys, and the poorest 
of their Pietists and Methodists/ 

It is here, then, that the spiritual majority of Teufels- 
drockh commences: we are henceforth to see him 'work 
in well-doing,' with the spirit and clear aims of a Man. 
He has discovered that the Ideal Workshop he so panted 
for is even this same Actual ill-furnished Workshop he 
has so long been stumbling in. He can say to himself: 
' Tools ? Thou hast no Tools ? Why, there is not a 



PAUSE 177 

Man, or a Thing, now alive but has tools. The basest 
of created animalcules, the Spider itself, has a spinning- 
jenny, and warping-mill, and power-loom within its 
head: the stupidest of Oysters has a Papin's-Digester, 
with stone-and-lime house to hold it in : every being that 
can live can do something: this let him do. — Tools? 
Hast thou not a Brain, furnished, furnishable with some 
glimmerings of Light; and three fingers to hold a Pen 
withal? Never since Aaron's rod went out of prac- 
tise^ or even before it, was there such a wonder-working 
Tool: greater than all recorded miracles have been per- 
formed by Pens. For strangely in this so solid-seeming 
World, which nevertheless is in continual restless flux, 
it is appointed that Sound, to appearance the most fleet- 
ing, should be the most continuing of all things. The 
Word is well said to be omnipotent in this world; man, 
thereby divine, can create as by a Fiat. Awake, arise! 
Speak forth what is in thee; what God has given thee, 
what the Devil shall not take away. Higher task than 
that of Priesthood was allotted to no man: wert thou 
but the meanest in that sacred Hierarchy, is it not honor 
enough therein to spend and be spent? 

' By this Art, which whoso will may sacrilegiously de- 
grade into a handicraft/ adds Teufelsdrockh, ' have I 
thenceforth abidden. Writings of mine, not indeed 
known as mine (for what am I?), have fallen, perhaps 
not altogether void, into the mighty seed-field of Opin- 
ion; fruits of my unseen sowing gratifyingly meet me 
here and there. I thank the Heavens that I have now 
found my Calling; wherein, with or without perceptible 
result, I am minded diligently to persevere. 

' Nay how knowest thou,' cries he, ' but this and the 
other pregnant Device, now grown to be a world-re- 
nowned far-working Institution; like a grain of right 
mustard-seed once cast into the right soil, and now 



178 SARTOR RESARTUS 






stretching-out strong boughs to the four winds, for the 
birds of the air to lodge in, — may have been properly 
my doing? Some one's doing, it without doubt was; 
from some Idea, in some single Head, it did first of all 
take beginning: why not from some Idea in mine?' 
Does Teufelsdrockh here glance at that ' Society for 
the Conservation of Property (Eigenthums-con- 
servirende Gesellschaft),' of which so many ambiguous 
notices glide specter-like through these inexpressible 
Paper-bags ? ' An Institution,' hints he, ' not unsuitable 
to the wants of the time; as indeed such sudden exten- 
sion proves: for already can the Society number, among 
its office-bearers or corresponding members, the highest 
Names, if not the highest Persons, in Germany, Eng- 
land, France; and contributions, both of money and of 
meditation, pour in from all quarters; to, if possible, 
enlist the remaining Integrity of the world, and, de- 
fensively and with forethought, marshal it round this 
Palladium.' Does Teufelsdrockh mean, then, to give 
himself out as the originator of that so notable Eigen- 
thums-conservirende (* Owndom-conserving ') Gesell- 
schaft; and if so, what, in the Devil's name, is it? He 
again hints : 'At a time when the divine Command- 
ment, Thou shalt not steal, wherein truly, if well under- 
stood, is comprised the whole Hebrew Decalogue, with 
Solon's and Lycurgus's Constitutions, Justinian's Pan- 
dects, the Code Napoleon, and all Codes, Catechisms, 
Divinities, Moralities whatsoever, that man has hitherto 
devised (and enforced with Altar-fire and Gallows- 
ropes) for his social guidance: at a time, I say, when 
this divine Commandment has ail-but faded away from 
the general remembrance; and, with little disguise, a 
new opposite Commandment, Thou shalt steal, is every- 
where promulgated, — it perhaps behoved, in this uni- 
versal dotage and deliration, the sound portion of man- 



PAUSE 179 

kind to bestir themselves and rally. When the widest 
and wildest violations of that divine right of Property, 
the only divine right now extant or conceivable, are 
sanctioned and recommended by a vicious Press, and 
the world has lived to hear it asserted that we have no 
Property in our very Bodies, but only an accidental Pos- 
session and Life-rent, what is the issue to be looked for ? 
Hangmen and Catchpoles may, by their noose-gins and 
baited fall-traps, keep down the smallest sort of ver- 
min; but what, except perhaps some such Universal 
Association, can protect us against whole meat-devour- 
ing and man-devouring hosts of Boa-constrictors? If, 
therefore, the more sequestered Thinker have wondered, 
in his privacy, from what hand that perhaps not ill- 
written Program in the Public Journals, with its high 
Prize-Questions and so liberal Prizes, could have pro- 
ceeded, — let him now cease such wonder; and, with un- 
divided faculty, betake himself to the Concurrenz (Com- 
petition)/ 

We ask : Has this same ' perhaps not ill-written Pro- 
gram/ or any other authentic Transaction of that Prop- 
erty-conserving Society, fallen under the eye of the 
British Reader, in any Journal foreign or domestic? 
If so, what are those Prize-Questions; what are the 
terms of Competition, and when and where? No printed 
Newspaper-leaf, no farther light of any sort, to be met 
With in these Paper-bags ! Or is the whole business one 
other of those whimsicalities and perverse inexplica- 
bilities, whereby Herr Teufelsdrockh, meaning much or 
nothing, is pleased so often to play fast-and-loose with 
us? 

Here, indeed, at length, must the Editor give utter- 
ance to a painful suspicion, which, through late Chap- 
ters, has begun to haunt him; paralyzing any little en- 
thusiasm that might still have rendered his thorny Bio- 



180 SARTOR RESARTUS 






graphical task a labor of love. It is a suspicion 
grounded perhaps on trifles, yet confirmed almost into 
certainty by the more and more discernible humoristico- 
satirical tendency of Teufelsdrockh, in whom under- 
ground humors and intricate sardonic rogueries, wheel 
within wheel, defy all reckoning: a suspicion, in one 
word, that these Autobiographical Documents are partly 
a mystification! What if many a so-called Fact were 
little better than a Fiction; if here we had no direct 
Camera-obscura Picture of the Professor's History; but 
only some more or less fantastic Adumbration, sym- 
bolically, perhaps significantly enough, shadowing-forth 
the same! Our theory begins to be that, in receiving 
as literally authentic what was but hieroglyphically so, 
Hofrath Heuschrecke, whom in that case we scruple 
not to name Hofrath Nose-of-Wax, was made a fool 
of, and set adrift to make fools of others. Could it 
be expected, indeed, that a man so known for impene- 
trable reticence as Teufelsdrockh, would all at once 
frankly unlock his private citadel to an English Editor 
and a German Hofrath; and not rather deceptively in- 
lock both Editor and Hofrath in the labyrinthic tortuosi- 
ties and covered-ways of said citadel (having enticed 
them thither), to see, in his half -devilish way, how the 
fools would look? 

Of one fool, however, the Herr Professor will per- 
haps find himself short. On a small slip, formerly 
thrown aside as blank, the ink being ail-but invisible, 
we lately notice, and with effort decipher, the follow- 
ing : ' What are your historical Facts ; still more your 
biographical? Wilt thou know a Man, above all a 
Mankind, by stringing-together beadrolls of what thou 
namest Facts? The Man is the spirit he worked in; 
not what he did, but what he became. Facts are en- 
graved Hierograms, for which the fewest have the key. 



PAUSE 181 

And then how your Block-head (Dummkopf) studies 
not their Meaning; but simply whether they are well or 
ill cut, what he calls Moral or Immoral! Still worse 
is it with your Bungler (JPfuscher) : such I have seen 
reading some Rousseau, with pretenses of interpreta- 
tion; and mistaking the ill-cut Serpent-of-Eternity for 
a common poisonous reptile/ Was the Professor ap- 
prehensive lest an Editor, selected as the present boasts 
himself, might mistake the Teufelsdrockh Serpent-of- 
Eternity in like manner? For which reason it was to 
be altered, not without underhand satire, into a plainer 
Symbol? Or is this merely one of his half-sophisms, 
half-truisms, which if he can but set on the back of a 
Figure, he cares not whither it gallop? We say not 
with certainty; and indeed, so strange is the Profes- 
sor, can never say. If our suspicion be wholly un- 
founded, let his own questionable ways, not our neces- 
sary circumspectness, bear the blame. 

But be this as it will, the somewhat exasperated and 
indeed exhausted Editor determines here to shut these 
Paper-bags for the present. Let it suffice that we know 
of Teufelsdrockh, so far, if ' not what he did, yet what 
he became ' : the rather, as his character has now taken 
its ultimate bent, and no new revolution, of importance, 
is to be looked for. The imprisoned Chrysalis is now 
a winged Psyche: and such, wheresoever be its flight, 
it will continue. To trace by what complex gyrations 
(flights or involuntary waf tings) through the mere ex- 
ternal Life-element, Teufelsdrockh reaches his Uni- 
versity Professorship, and the Psyche clothes herself in 
civic Titles, without altering her now fixed nature, — 
would be comparatively an unproductive task, were we 
even unsuspicious of its being, for us at least, a false 
and impossible one. His outward Biography, therefore, 
which, at the Blumine Lover's-Leap, we saw churned 



182 SARTOR RESARTUS 

utterly into spray-vapor, may hover in that condition, 
for aught that concerns us here. Enough that by sur- 
vey of certain ' pools and plashes,' we have ascertained 
its general direction; do we not already know that, by 
one way and other, it has long since rained-down again 
into a stream; and even now, at Weissnichtwo, flows 
deep and still, fraught with the Philosophy of Clothes, 
and visible to whoso will cast eye thereon? Over much 
invaluable matter, that lies scattered, like jewels among 
quarry-rubbish, in those Paper-catacombs, we may have 
occasion to glance back, and somewhat will demand 
insertion at the right place: meanwhile be our tiresome 
diggings therein suspended. 

If now, before reopening the great Clothes-Volume, 
we ask what our degree of progress, during these Ten 
Chapters, has been, towards right understanding of 
the Clothes-Philosophy , let not our discouragement be- 
come total. To speak in that old figure of the Hell- 
gate Bridge over Chaos, a few flying pontoons have 
perhaps been added, though as yet they drift straggling 
on the Flood; how far they will reach, when once the 
chains are straightened and fastened, can, at present, 
only be matter of conjecture. 

So much we already calculate: Through many a little 
loophole, we have had glimpses into the internal world 
of Teuf elsdrockh ; his strange mystic, almost magic Dia- 
gram of the Universe, and how it was gradually drawn, 
is not henceforth altogether dark to us. Those mys- 
terious ideas on Time, which merit consideration, and 
are not wholly unintelligible with such, may by and by 
prove significant. Still more may his somewhat peculiar 
view of Nature, the decisive Oneness he ascribes to 
Nature. How all Nature and Life are but one Garment, 
a ' Living Garment,' woven and ever aweaving in the 
' Loom of Time * ; is not here, indeed, the outline of a 



PAUSE 183 

whole Clothes-Philosophy; at least the arena it is to 
work in? Remark, too, that the Character of the Man, 
nowise without meaning in such a matter, becomes less 
enigmatic: amid so much tumultuous obscurity, almost 
like diluted madness, do not a certain indomitable De- 
fiance and yet a boundless Reverence seem to loom 
forth, as the two mountain-summits, on whose rock- 
strata all the rest were based and built? 

Nay further, may we not say that Teufelsdrockh's 
Biography, allowing it even, as suspected, only a hiero- 
glyphical truth, exhibits a man, as it were preappointed 
for Clothes-Philosophy? To look through the Shows 
of things into Things themselves he is led and com- 
pelled. The ' Passivity ' given him by birth is fostered 
by all turns of his fortune. Everywhere cast out, like 
oil out of water, from mingling in any Employment, in 
any public Communion, he has no portion but Solitude, 
and a life of Meditation. The whole energy of his 
existence is directed, through long years, on one task: 
that of enduring pain, if he cannot cure it. Thus every- 
where do the Shows of things oppress him, withstand 
him, threaten him with fearfullest destruction: only by 
victoriously penetrating into Things themselves can he 
find peace and a stronghold. But is not this same 
looking-through the Shows, or Vestures, into the Things, 
even the first preliminary to a Philosophy of Clothes? 
Do we not, in all this, discern some beckonings towards 
the true higher purport of such a Philosophy; and what 
shape it must assume with such a man, in such an era? 

Perhaps in entering on Book Third, the courteous 
Reader is not utterly without guess whither he is bound : 
nor, let us hope, for all the fantastic Dream-Grottoes 
through which, as is our lot with Teufelsdrockh, he 
must wander, will there be wanting between whiles some 
twinkling of a steady Polar Star. 



BOOK THIRD 



CHAPTER I 

INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY 

As a wonder-loving and wonder-seeking man, Teufels- 
drockh, from an early part of this Clothes-Volume, has 
more and more exhibited himself. Striking it was, amid 
all his perverse cloudiness, with what force of vision 
and of heart he pierced into the mystery of the World; 
recognizing in the highest sensible phenomena, so far 
as Sense went, only fresh or faded Raiment; yet ever, 
under this, a celestial Essence thereby rendered visible: 
and while, on the other hand, he trod the old rags of 
Matter, with their tinsels, into the mire, he on the other 
everywhere exalted Spirit above all earthly principali- 
ties and powers, and worshiped it, though under the 
meanest shapes, with a true Platonic mysticism. What 
the man ultimately purposed by thus casting his Greek- 
fire into the general Wardrobe of the Universe; what 
such, more or less complete, rending and burning of 
Garments throughout the whole compass of Civilized 
Life and Speculation, should lead to; the rather as he 
was no Adamite, in any sense, and could not, like Rous- 
seau, recommend either bodily or intellectual Nudity, 
and a return to the savage state: all this our readers 
are now bent to discover; this is, in fact, properly the 

184 



INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY 185 

gist and purport of Professor Teufelsdrockh's Philoso- 
phy of Clothes. 

Be it remembered, however, that such purport is here 
not so much evolved, as detected to lie ready for evolv- 
ing. We are to guide our British Friends into the new 
Gold-country, and show them the mines; nowise to dig- 
out and exhaust its wealth, which indeed remains for 
all time inexhaustible. Once there, let each dig for his 
own behoof, and enrich himself. 

Neither, in so capricious inexpressible a Work as this 
of the Professor's, can our course now more than for- 
merly be straightforward, step by step, but at best leap 
by leap. Significant Indications stand-out here and 
there; which for the critical eye, that looks both widely 
and narrowly, shape themselves into some ground- 
scheme of a Whole: to select these with judgment, so 
that a leap from one to the other be possible, and (in 
our old figure) by chaining them together, a passable 
Bridge be effected: this, as heretofore, continues our 
only method. Among such light-spots, the following, 
floating in much wild matter about Perfectibility, has 
seemed worth clutching at: 

' Perhaps the most remarkable incident in Modern 
History/ says Teuf elsdrockh, ' is not the Diet of Worms, 
still less the Battle of Austerlitz, Waterloo, Peterloo, 
or any other Battle; but an incident passed carelessly 
over by most Historians, and treated with some degree 
of ridicule by others: namely, George Fox's making to 
himself a suit of Leather. This man, the first of the 
Quakers, and by trade a Shoemaker, was one of those, 
to whom, under ruder or purer form, the Divine Idea 
of the Universe is pleased to manifest itself; and, across 
all the hulls of Ignorance and earthly Degradation, shine 
through, in unspeakable Awfulness, unspeakable Beauty, 
on their souls: who therefore are rightly accounted 



186 SARTOR RESARTUS 



Prophets, God-possessed; or even Gods, as in some 
periods it has chanced. Sitting in his stall; working on 
tanned hides, amid pincers, paste-horns, rosin, swine- 
bristles, and a nameless flood of rubbish, this youth 
had, nevertheless, a Living Spirit belonging to him ; 
also an antique Inspired Volume, through which, as 
through a window, it could look upwards, and discern its 
celestial Home. The task of a daily pair of shoes, 
coupled even with some prospect of victuals, and an 
honorable Mastership in Cordwainery, and perhaps the 
post of Thirdborough in his hundred, as the crown of 
long faithful sewing, — was nowise satisfaction enough 
to such a mind: but ever amid the boring and hammer- 
ing came tones from that far country, came Splendors 
and Terrors; for this poor Cordwainer, as we said, was 
a Man; and the Temple of Immensity, wherein as Man 
he had been sent to minister, was full of holy mystery 
to him. 

' The Clergy of the neighborhood, the ordained 
Watchers and Interpreters of that same holy mystery, 
listened with unaffected tedium to his consultations, 
and advised him, as the solution of such doubts, to 
" drink beer and dance with the girls." Blind leaders 
of the blind ! For what end were their tithes levied and 
eaten; for what were their shovel-hats scooped-out, and 
their surplices and cassock-aprons girt-on; and such 
a church-repairing, and chaffering, and organing, and 
other racketing, held over that spot of God's Earth, — if 
Man were but a Patent Digester, and the Belly with its 
adjuncts the grand Reality? Fox turned from them, 
with tears and a sacred scorn, back to his Leather- 
parings and his Bible. Mountains of encumbrance, 
higher than iEtna, had been heaped over that Spirit: 
but it was a Spirit, and would not lie buried there. 
Through long days and nights of silent agony, it strug- 






INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY 187 

gled and wrestled, with a man's force, to be free; how 
its prison-mountains heaved and swayed tumultuously, 
as the giant spirit shook them to this hand and that, and 
emerged into the light of Heaven ! That Leicester shoe- 
shop, had men known it, was a holier place than any 
Vatican or Loretto-shrine. — " So bandaged, and ham- 
pered, and hemmed in," groaned he, " with thousand 
requisitions, obligations, straps, tatters, and tagrags, I 
can neither see nor move: not my own am I, but the 
World's; and Time flies fast, and Heaven is high, and 
Hell is deep: Man! bethink thee, if thou hast power 
of Thought! Why not; what binds me here? Want, 
want ! — Ha, of what? Will all the shoe-wages under the 
Moon ferry me across into that far Land of Light? 
Only Meditation can, and devout Prayer to God. I will 
to the woods: the hollow of a tree will lodge me, wild- 
berries feed me; and for Clothes, cannot I stitch myself 
one perennial suit of Leather ! " 

' Historical Oil-painting,' continues Teufelsdrockh, 
' is one of the Arts I never practised ; therefrom shall 
I not decide whether this subject were easy of execu- 
tion on the canvas. Yet often has it seemed to me as 
if such first outflashing of man's Freewill, to lighten, 
more and more into Day, the Chaotic Night that threat- 
ened to engulf him in its hindrances and its horrors, 
were properly the only grandeur there is in History. 
Let some living Angelo or Rosa, with seeing eye and 
understanding heart, picture George Fox on that morn- 
ing, when he spreads-out his cutting-board for the last 
time, and cuts cowhides by unwonted patterns, and 
stitches them together into one continuous all-including 
Case, the farewell service of his awl! Stitch away, 
thou noble Fox: every prick of that little instrument is 
pricking into the heart of Slavery, and World-worship, 
and the Mammon-god. Thy elbows jerk, as in strong 



188 SARTOR RESARTUS 

swimmer-strokes, and every stroke is bearing thee across 
the Prison-ditch, within which Vanity holds her Work- 
house and Ragfair, into lands of true Liberty; were 
the work done, there is in broad Europe one Free Man, 
and thou art he! 

' Thus from the lowest depth there is a path to the 
loftiest height; and for the Poor also a Gospel has 
been published. Surely if, as D'Alembert asserts, my 
illustrious namesake, Diogenes, was the greatest man 
of Antiquity, only that he wanted Decency, then by 
stronger reason is George Fox the greatest of the Mod- 
erns, and greater than Diogenes himself: for he too 
stands on the adamantine basis of his Manhood, casting 
aside all props and shoars ; yet not, in half-savage Pride, 
undervaluing the Earth; valuing it rather, as a place 
to yield him warmth and food, he looks Heavenward 
from his Earth, and dwells in an element of Mercy and 
Worship, with a still Strength, such as the Cynic's Tub 
did nowise witness. Great, truly, was that Tub; a tem- 
ple from which man's dignity and divinity was scorn- 
fully preached abroad: but greater is the Leather Hull, 
for the same sermon was preached there, and not in 
Scorn but in Love.* 

George Fox's ' perennial suit,' with all that it held, 
has been worn quite into ashes for nigh two centuries: 
why, in a discussion on the Perfectibility of Society, 
reproduce it now? Not out of blind sectarian partisan- 
ship: Teufelsdrockh himself is no Quaker; with all his 
pacific tendencies, did not we see him, in that scene at 
the North Cape, with the Archangel Smuggler, exhibit 
fire-arms ? 

For us, aware of his deep Sansculottism, there is 
more meant in this passage than meets the ear. At the 
same time, who can avoid smiling at the earnestness 



INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY 189 

and Boeotian simplicity (if indeed there be not an 
underhand satire in it), with which that 'Incident* is 
here brought forward; and, in the Professor's ambigu- 
ous way, as clearly perhaps as he durst in Weissnichtwo, 
recommended to imitation ! Does Teufelsdrbckh antici- 
pate that, in this age of refinement, any considerable 
class of the community, by way of testifying against 
the ' Mammon-god,' and escaping from what he calls 
' Vanity's Workhouse and Ragfair/ where doubtless 
some of them are toiled and whipped and hood-winked 
sufficiently, — will sheathe themselves in close-fitting 
cases of Leather ? The idea is ridiculous in the extreme. 
Will Majesty lay aside its robes of state, and Beauty its 
frills and train-gowns, for a second-skin of tanned hide ? 
By which change Huddersfield and Manchester, and 
Coventry and Paisley, and the Fancy-Bazaar, were re- 
duced to hungry solitudes; and only Day and Martin 
could profit. For neither would Teufelsdrockh's mad 
day-dream, here as we presume covertly intended, of 
leveling Society (leveling it indeed with a vengeance, 
into one huge drowned marsh!), and so attaining the 
political effects of Nudity without its frigorific or other 
consequences, — be thereby realized. Would not the rich 
man purchase a waterproof suit of Russia Leather; and 
the high-born Belle step-forth in red or azure morocco, 
lined with shamoy: the black cowhide being left to the 
Drudges and Gibeonites of the world; and so all the old 
Distinctions be reestablished? 

Or has the Professor his own deeper intention; and 
laughs in his sleeve at our strictures and glosses, which 
indeed are but a part thereof? 



190 SARTOR RESARTUS 

CHAPTER II 



CHURCH-CLOTHES 



Not less questionable is his Chapter on Church- 
Clothes, which has the farther distinction of being the 
shortest in the Volume. We here translate it entire: 

' By Church-Clothes, it need not be premised that I 
mean infinitely more than Cassocks and Surplices; and 
do not at all mean the mere haberdasher Sunday Clothes 
that men go to Church in. Far from it! Church- 
Clothes, are, in our vocabulary, the Forms, the Vestures, 
under which men have at various periods embodied and 
represented for themselves the Religious Principle; that 
is to say, invested the Divine Idea of the World with a 
sensible and practically active Body, so that it might 
dwell among them as a living and life-giving Word. 

* These are unspeakably the most important of all the 
vestures and garnitures of Human Existence. They are 
first spun and woven, I may say, by that wonder of 
wonders, Society; for it is still only when "two or 
three are gathered together," that Religion, spiritually 
existent, and indeed indestructible, however latent, in 
each, first outwardly manifests itself (as with " cloven 
tongues of fire "), and seeks to be embodied in a visible 
Communion and Church Militant. Mystical, more than 
magical, is that Communing of Soul with Soul, both 
looking heavenward: here properly Soul first speaks 
with Soul; for only in looking heavenward, take it in 
what sense you may, not in looking earthward, does 
what we can call Union, mutual Love, Society, begin 
to be possible. How true is that of Novalis : " It is 
certain, my Belief gains quite infinitely the moment I 
can convince another mind thereof " ! Gaze thou in the 






CHURCH-CLOTHES 191 

face of thy Brother, in those eyes where plays the lam- 
bent fire of Kindness, or in those where rages the lurid 
conflagration of Anger; feel how thy own so quiet Soul 
is straightway involuntarily kindled with the like, and 
ye blaze and reverberate on each other, till it is all one 
limitless confluent flame (of embracing Love, or of 
deadly-grappling Hate) ; and then say what miraculous 
virtue goes out of man into man. But if so, through 
all the thick-plied hulls of our Earthly Life; how much 
more when it is of the Divine Life we speak, and inmost 
Me is, as it were, brought into contact with inmost Me! 

* Thus was it that I said, the Church-Clothes are first 
spun and woven by Society; outward Religion originates 
by Society, Society becomes possible by Religion. Nay, 
perhaps, every conceivable Society, past and present, 
may well be figured as properly and wholly a Church, 
in one or other of these three predicaments: an audibly 
preaching and prophesying Church, which is the best; 
second, a Church that struggles to preach and prophesy, 
but cannot as yet, till its Pentecost come; and third 
and worst, a Church gone dumb with old age, or which 
only mumbles delirium prior to dissolution. Whoso 
fancies that by Church is here meant Chapterhouses and 
Cathedrals, or by preaching and prophesying, mere 
speech and chanting, let him,' says the oracular Profes- 
sor, * read on, light of heart (getrosten Muthes). 

' But with regard to your Church proper, and the 
Church-Clothes specially recognized as Church-Clothes, 
I remark, fearlessly enough, that without such Vestures 
and sacred Tissues Society has not existed, and will not 
exist. For if Government is, so to speak, the outward 
Skin of the Body Politic, holding the whole together 
and protecting it; and all your Craft-Guilds, and As- 
sociations for Industry, of hand or of head, are the 
Fleshly Clothes, the muscular and osseous Tissues 



192 SARTOR RESARTUS 

(lying under such Skin), whereby Society stands and 
works; — then is Religion the inmost Pericardial and 
Nervous Tissue, which ministers Life and warm Circu- 
lation to the whole. Without which Pericardial Tissue 
the Bones and Muscles (of Industry) were inert, or 
animated only by a Galvanic vitality; the Skin would 
become a shriveled pelt, or fast-rotting raw-hide; and 
Society itself a dead carcass, — deserving to be buried. 
Men were no longer Social, but Gregarious ; which latter 
state also could not continue, but must gradually issue 
in universal selfish discord, hatred, savage isolation, 
and dispersion; — whereby, as we might continue to say, 
the very dust and dead body of Society would have 
evaporated and become abolished. Such, and so all- 
important, all-sustaining, are the Church-Clothes to civi- 
lized or even to rational men. 

' Meanwhile, in our era of the World, those same 
Church-Clothes have gone sorrowfully out-at-elbows : 
nay, far worse, many of them have become mere hollow 
Shapes, or Masks, under which no living Figure or 
Spirit any longer dwells; but only spiders and unclean 
beetles, in horrid accumulation, drive their trade; and 
the mask still glares on you with its glass-eyes, in ghastly 
affectation of Life, — some generation-and-half after Re- 
ligion has quite withdrawn from it, and in unnoticed 
nooks is weaving for herself new Vestures, wherewith to 
reappear, and bless us, or our sons or grandsons. As a 
Priest, or Interpreter of the Holy, is the noblest and 
highest of all men, so is a Sham-priest (Schein-priester) 
the falsest and basest; neither is it doubtful that his 
Canonicals, were they Popes' Tiaras, will one day be 
torn from him, to make bandages for the wounds of 
mankind; or even to burn into tinder, for general scien- 
tific or culinary purposes. 

' All which, as out of place here, falls to be handled 



SYMBOLS 193 

in my Second Volume, On the Palingenesia, or Newbirth 
of Society; which volume, as treating practically of the 
Wear, Destruction, and Retexture of Spiritual Tissues, 
or Garments, forms, properly speaking, the Transcen- 
dental or ultimate Portion of this my work on Clothes, 
and is already in a state of forwardness.' 

And herewith, no farther exposition, note, or com- 
mentary being added, does Teufelsdrockh, and must his 
Editor now, terminate the singular chapter on Church- 
Clothes ! 



CHAPTER III 

SYMBOLS 

Probably it will elucidate the drift of these foregoing 
obscure utterances, if we here insert somewhat of our 
Professor's speculations on Symbols. To state his whole 
doctrine, indeed, were beyond our compass: nowhere is 
he more mysterious, impalpable, than in this of ' Fan- 
tasy being the organ of the Godlike ' ; and how ' Man 
thereby, though based, to all seeming, on the small 
Visible, does nevertheless extend down into the infinite 
deeps of the Invisible, of which Invisible, indeed, his 
Life is properly the bodying forth.' Let us, omitting 
these high transcendental aspects of the matter, study 
to glean (whether from the Paper-bags or the Printed 
Volume) what little seems logical and practical, and 
cunningly arrange it into such degree of coherence as 
it will assume. By way of proem, take the following 
not injudicious remarks: 

' The benignant efficacies of Concealment,' cries our 
Professor, ' who shall speak or sing? Silence and 



194. SARTOR RESARTUS 

Secrecy! Altars might still be raised to them (were 
this an altar-building time) for universal worship. Si- 
lence is the element in which great things fashion them- 
selves together; that at length they may emerge, 
full- formed and majestic, into the daylight of Life, 
which they are thenceforth to rule. Not William the 
Silent only, but all the considerable men I have known, 
and the most undiplomatic and unstrategic of these, 
forbore to babble of what they were creating and pro- 
jecting. Nay, in thy own mean perplexities, do thou 
thyself but hold thy tongue for one day : on the morrow, 
how much clearer are thy purposes and duties; what 
wreck and rubbish have those mute workmen within thee 
swept away, when intrusive noises were shut out! 
Speech is too often not, as the Frenchman denned it, 
the art of concealing Thought; but of quite stifling and 
suspending Thought, so that there is none to conceal. 
Speech too is great, but not the greatest. As the Swiss 
Inscription says: Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist 
golden (Speech is silvern, Silence is golden) ; or as I 
might rather express it: Speech is of Time, Silence is 
of Eternity. 

' Bees will not work except in darkness ; Thought will 
not work except in Silence: neither will Virtue work 
except in Secrecy. Let not thy left hand know what 
thy right hand doeth ! Neither shalt thou prate even 
to thy own heart of " those secrets known to all." Is 
not Shame (Schaam) the soil of all Virtue, of all good 
manners and good morals? Like other plants, Virtue 
will not grow unless its root be hidden, buried from the 
eye of the sun. Let the sun shine on it, nay do but 
look at it privily thyself, the root withers, and no flowers 
will glad thee. O my Friends, when we view the fair 
clustering flowers that overwreathe, for example, the 
Marriage-bower, and encircle man's life with the 



SYMBOLS 195 

fragrance and hues of Heaven, what hand will not smite 
the foul plunderer that grubs them up by the roots, and 
with grinning, grunting satisfaction, shows us the dung 
they nourish in ! Men speak much of the Printing-Press 
with its Newspapers: du Himmel! what are these to 
Clothes and the Tailor's Goose ? ' 

' Of kin to the so incalculable influences of Conceal- 
ment, and connected with still greater things, is the 
wondrous agency of Symbols. In a Symbol there is 
concealment and yet revelation: here therefore, by Si- 
lence and by Speech acting together, comes a double 
significance. And if both the Speech be itself high, and 
the Silence fit and noble, how expressive will their union 
be! Thus in many a painted Device, or simple Seal- 
emblem, the commonest Truth stands out to us pro- 
claimed with quite new emphasis. 

' For it is here that Fantasy with her mystic wonder- 
land plays into the small prose domain of Sense, and 
becomes incorporated therewith. In the Symbol proper, 
what we can call a Symbol, there is ever, more or less 
distinctly and directly, some embodiment and revelation 
of the Infinite; the Infinite is made to blend itself with, 
the Finite, to stand visible; and as it were, attainable 
there. By Symbols, accordingly, is man guided and 
commanded, made happy, made wretched. He every- 
where finds himself encompassed with Symbols, recog- 
nized as such or not recognized: the Universe is but one 
vast Symbol of God; nay if thou wilt have it, what is 
man himself but a Symbol of God ; is not all that he does 
symbolical; a revelation to Sense of the mystic god-given 
force that is in him ; a " Gospel of Freedom/' which he, 
the " Messias of Nature," preaches, as he can, by act 
and word? Not a Hut he builds but is the visible em- 
bodiment of a Thought; but bears visible record of 



196 SARTOR RESARTUS 

invisible things ; but is, in the transcendental sense, sym- 
bolical as well as real.' 

' Man,' says the Professor elsewhere, in quite an- 
tipodal contrast with these high-soaring delineations, 
which we have here cut-short on the verge of the inane, 
' Man is by birth somewhat of an owl. Perhaps, too, 
of all the owleries that ever possessed him, the most 
owlish, if we consider it, is that of your actually existing 
Motive-Millwrights. Fantastic tricks enough man has 
played, in his time; has fancied himself to be most 
things, down even to an animated heap of Glass: but 
to fancy himself a dead Iron-Balance for weighing Pains 
and Pleasures on, was reserved for this his latter era. 
There stands he, his Universe one huge Manger, filled 
with hay and thistles to be weighed against each other; 
and looks long-eared enough. Alas, poor devil ! specters 
are appointed to haunt him : one age he is hagridden, be- 
witched; the next, priestridden, befooled; in all ages, 
bedeviled. And now the Genius of Mechanism smothers 
him worse than any Nightmare did; till the Soul is 
nigh choked out of him, and only a kind of Digestive, 
Mechanic life remains. In Earth and in Heaven he 
can see nothing but Mechanism; has fear for nothing 
else, hope in nothing else: the world would indeed grind 
him to pieces; but cannot he fathom the Doctrine of 
Motives, and cunningly compute these, and mechanize 
them to grind the other way? 

' Were he not, as has been said, purblinded by en- 
chantment, you had but to bid him open his eyes and 
look. In which country, in which time, was it hitherto 
that man's history, or the history of any man, went-on 
by calculated or calculable "Motives"? What make 
ye of your Christianities, and Chivalries, and Reforma- 
tions, and Marseillese Hymns, and Reigns of Terror? 
Nay, has not perhaps the Motive-grinder himself been in 






SYMBOLS 197 

Love? Did he never stand so much as a contested Elec- 
tion? Leave him to Time, and the medicating virtue 
of Nature.' 

1 Yes, Friends/ elsewhere observes the Professor, ' not 
our Logical, Mensurative faculty, but our Imaginative 
one is King over us; I might say, Priest and Prophet 
to lead us heavenward ; or Magician and Wizard to lead 
us hellward. Nay, even for the basest Sensualist, what 
is Sense but the implement of Fantasy; the vessel it 
drinks out of? Ever in the dullest existence there is 
a sheen either of Inspiration or of Madness (thou 
partly hast it in thy choice, which of the two), that 
gleams-in from the circumambient Eternity, and colors 
with its own hues our little islet of Time. The Under- 
standing is indeed thy window, too clear thou canst not 
make it; but Fantasy is thy eye, with its color-giving 
retina, healthy or diseased. Have not I myself known 
five-hundred living soldiers sabered into crows'-meat for 
a piece of glazed cotton, which they called their Flag; 
which, had you sold it at any market-cross, would not 
have brought above three groschen? Did not the whole 
Hungarian Nation rise, like some tumultuous moon- 
stirred Atlantic, when Kaiser Joseph pocketed their 
Iron Crown; an implement, as was sagaciously observed, 
in size and commercial value little differing from a horse- 
shoe? It is in and through Symbols that man, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, lives, works, and has his 
being: those ages, moreover, are accounted the noblest 
which can the best recognize symbolical worth, and prize 
it the highest. For is not a Symbol ever, to him who 
has eyes for it, some dimmer or clearer revelation of 
the Godlike? 

' Of Symbols, however, I remark farther, that they 
have both an extrinsic and intrinsic value; oftenest the 
former only. What, for instance, was in that clouted 



198 SARTOR RESARTUS 

Shoe, which the Peasants bore aloft with them as ensign 
in their Bauernkrieg (Peasants' War) ? Or in the 
Wallet-and-staff round which the Netherland Gueux, 
glorying in that nickname of Beggars, heroically rallied 
and prevailed, though against King Philip himself? 
Intrinsic significance these had none; only extrinsic; as 
the accidental Standards of multitudes more or less 
sacredly uniting together; in which union itself, as above 
noted, there is ever something mystical and borrowing 
of the Godlike. Under a like category, too, stand, or 
stood, the stupidest heraldic Coats-of-arms ; military 
Banners everywhere; and generally all national or other 
sectarian Costumes and Customs : they have no intrinsic, 
necessary divineness, or even worth; but have acquired 
an extrinsic one. Nevertheless through all these there 
glimmers something of a Divine Idea; as through mili- 
tary Banners themselves, the Divine Idea of Duty, of 
heroic Daring; in some instances of Freedom, of Right. 
Nay the highest ensign that men ever met and embraced 
under, the Cross itself, had no meaning save an acci- 
dental extrinsic one. 

' Another matter it is, however, when your Symbol 
has intrinsic meaning, and is of itself -fit that men should 
unite round it. Let but the Godlike manifest itself to 
Sense; let but Eternity look, more or less visibly, through 
the Time-Figure (Zeitbild) ! Then is it fit that men 
unite there; and worship together before such Symbol; 
and so from day to day, and from age to age, superadd 
to it new divineness. 

' Of this latter sort are all true Works of Art : in them 
(if thou know a Work of Art from a Daub of Artifice) 
wilt thou discern Eternity looking through Time; the 
Godlike rendered visible. Here too may an extrinsic 
value gradually superadd itself: thus certain Iliads, and 
the like, have, in three-thousand years, attained quite 



SYMBOLS 199 

new significance. But nobler than all in this kind are 
the Lives of heroic god-inspired Men; for what other 
Work of Art is so divine? In Death too, in the Death 
of the Just, as the last perfection of a Work of Art, 
may we not discern symbolic meaning? In that divinely 
transfigured Sleep, as of Victory, resting over the 
beloved face which now knows thee no more, read (if 
thou canst for tears) the confluence of Time with Eter- 
nity, and some gleam of the latter peering through. 

' Highest of all Symbols are those wherein the Artist 
or Poet has risen into Prophet, and all men can recognize 
a present God, and worship the same: I mean religious 
Symbols. Various enough have been such religious Sym- 
bols, what we call Religious; as men stood in this stage 
of culture or the other, and could worse or better body- 
forth the Godlike: some Symbols with a transient in- 
trinsic worth; many with only an extrinsic. If thou ask 
to what height man has carried it in this manner, look 
on our divinest Symbol: on Jesus of Nazareth, and his 
Life, and his Biography, and what followed therefrom. 
Higher has the human Thought not yet reached: this is 
Christianity and Christendom ; a Symbol of quite peren- 
nial, infinite character; whose significance will ever de- 
mand to be anew inquired into, and anew made manifest. 
' But, on the whole, as Time adds much to the sacred- 
ness of Symbols, so likewise in his progress he at length 
defaces, or even desecrates them; and Symbols, like all 
terrestrial Garments, wax old. Homer's Epos has not 
ceased to be true ; yet it is no longer our Epos, but shines 
in the distance, if clearer and clearer, yet also smaller 
and smaller, like a receding Star. It needs a scientific 
telescope, it needs to be reinterpreted and artificially 
brought near us, before we can so much as know that it 
was a Sun. So likewise a daj comes when the Runic 



200 SARTOR RESARTUS 

Thor, with his Eddas, must withdraw into dimness; and 
many an African Mumbo- Jumbo and Indian Pawaw be 
utterly abolished. For all things, even Celestial Lumi- 
naries, much more atmospheric meteors, have their rise, 
their culmination, their decline.' 

' Small is this which thou tellest me, that the Royal 
Scepter is but a piece of gilt-wood; that the Pyx has 
become a most foolish box, and truly, as Ancient Pistol 
thought, " of little price." A right Conjuror might I 
name thee, couldst thou conjure back into these wooden 
tools the divine virtue they once held.' 

' Of this thing, however, be certain : wouldst thou 
plant for Eternity, then plant into the deep infinite 
faculties of man, his Fantasy and Heart; wouldst thou 
plant for Year and Day, then plant into his shallow 
superficial faculties, his Self-love and Arithmetical Un- 
derstanding, what will grow there. A Hierarch, there- 
fore, and Pontiff of the World will we call him, the 
Poet and inspired Maker; who, Prometheus-like, can 
shape new Symbols, and bring new Fire from Heaven to 
fix it there. Such too will not always be wanting; 
neither perhaps now are. Meanwhile, as the average of 
matters goes, we account him Legislator and wise who 
can so much as tell when a Symbol has grown old, and 
gently remove it. 

' When, as the last English Coronation was prepar- 
ing,' concludes this wonderful Professor, ' I read in their 
Newspapers that the " Champion of England," he who 
has to offer battle to the Universe for his new King, 
had brought it so far that he could now " mount his 
horse with little assistance," I said to myself: Here also 
we have a Symbol well-nigh superannuated. Alas, 
move whithersoever you may, are not the tatters and rags 
of superannuated worn-out Symbols (in this Ragfair of 



HELOTAGE 201 

a World) dropping off everywhere, to hoodwink, to 
halter, to tether you; nay, if you shake them not aside, 
threatening to accumulate, and perhaps produce suffo- 
cation ? ' 



CHAPTER IV 

HELOTAGE 

At this point we determine on adverting shortly, or 
rather reverting, to a certain Tract of Hofrath Heusch- 
recke's, entitled Institute for the Repression of Popu- 
lation; which lies, dishonorably enough (with torn leaves, 
and a perceptible smell of aloetic drugs), stuffed into the 
Bag Pisces. Not indeed for the sake of the Tract itself, 
which we admire little; but of the marginal Notes, evi- 
dently in Teufelsdrockh's hand, which rather copiously 
fringe it. A few of these may be in their right place 
here. 

Into the Hofrath's Institute, with its extraordinary 
schemes, and machinery of Corresponding Boards and 
the like, we shall not so much as glance. Enough for 
us to understand that Heuschrecke is a disciple of 
Malthus; and so zealous for the doctrine, that his zeal 
almost literally eats him up. A deadly fear of Popula- 
tion possesses the Hofrath; something like a fixed-idea; 
undoubtedly akin to the more diluted forms of Madness. 
Nowhere, in that quarter of his intellectual world, is 
there light; nothing but a grim shadow of Hunger; open 
mouths opening wider and wider; a world to terminate 
by the frightfulest consummation: by its too dense in- 
habitants, famished into delirium, universally eating one 
another. To make air for himself in which strangula- 
tion, choking enough to a benevolent heart, the Hofrath 



202 SARTOR RESARTUS 






founds, or proposes to found, this Institute of his, as 
the best he can do. It is only with our Professor's com- 
ments thereon that we concern ourselves. 

First, then, remark that Teufelsdrockh, as a specula- 
tive Radical, has his own notions about human dignity; 
that the Zahdarm palaces and courtesies have not made 
him forgetful of the Futteral cottages. On the blank 
cover of Heuschrecke's Tract we find the following in- 
distinctly engrossed: 

' Two men I honor, and no third. First, the toilworn 
Craftsman that with earth-made Implement laboriously 
conquers the Earth, and makes her man's. Venerable 
to me is the hard Hand; crooked, coarse; wherein not- 
withstanding lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, 
as of the Scepter of this Planet. Venerable too is the 
rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude 
intelligence; for it is the face of a Man living manlike. 
O, but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even 
because we must pity as well as love thee! Hardly- 
entreated Brother! For us was thy back so bent, for 
us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed: thou 
wert our Conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting 
our battles wert so marred. For in thee too lay a god- 
created Form, but it was not to be unfolded; encrusted 
must it stand with the thick adhesions and defacements 
of Labor: and thy body, like thy soul, was not to know 
freedom. Yet toil on, toil on: thou art in thy duty, be 
out of it who may; thou toilest for the altogether indis- 
pensable, for daily bread. 

' A second man I honor, and still more highly : Him 
who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable; not 
daily bread, but the bread of Life. Is not he too in his 
duty; endeavoring towards inward Harmony; revealing 
this, by act or by word, through all his outward en- 
deavors, be they high or low? Highest of all, when his 



HELOTAGE 203 

outward and his inward endeavor are one; when we 
can name him Artist; not earthly Craftsman only, but 
inspired Thinker, who with heaven-made Implement con- 
quers Heaven for us ! If the poor and humble toil that 
we have Food, must not the high and glorious toil for 
him in return, that he have Light, have Guidance, Free- 
dom, Immortality? — These two, in all their degrees, I 
honor : all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind blow 
whither it listeth. 

' Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find 
both dignities united; and he that must toil outwardly 
for the lowest of man's wants, is also toiling inwardly 
for the highest. Sublimer in this world know I nothing 
than a Peasant Saint, could such now anywhere be met 
with. Such a one will take thee back to Nazareth itself; 
thou wilt see the splendor of Heaven spring forth from 
the humblest depths of Earth, like a light shining in 
great darkness.' 

And again : ' It is not because of his toils that I lament 
for the poor: we must all toil, or steal (howsoever we 
name our stealing), which is worse ; no faithfuljworkman 
finds his task a pastime. The poor is hungry and 
athirst; but for him 'also there is food and drink: he is 
heavy-laden and weary; but for him also the Heavens 
send Sleep, and of the deepest ; in his smoky cribs, a 
clear dewy heaven of Rest envelops^ him, and fitful glit- 
terings of cloud-skirted Dreams. (But what I do mourn 
over is, that the lamp of his soul should go out; that 
no ray of heavenly, or even of earthly knowledge, should 
visit him; but only, in the haggard darkness, like two 
specters, Fear and Indignation bear him company. 
Alas, while the body stands so broad and brawny, must 
the Soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost annihi- 
latedJJ Alas, was this too a Breath of God; bestowed in 
Heaven, but on earth never to be unfolded ! — That there 



204 SARTOR RESARTUS 

should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for 
Knowledge, this I call a tragedy, were it to happen 
more than twenty times in the minute, as by some com- 
putations it does. The miserable fraction of Science 
which our united Mankind, in a wide Universe of 
Nescience, has acquired, why is not this, with all dili- 
gence, imparted to all?' 

Quite in an opposite strain is the following: ' The old 
Spartans had a wiser method; and went out and hunted- 
down their Helots, and speared and spitted them, when 
they grew too numerous. With our improved fashions 
of hunting, Herr Hofrath, now after the invention of 
fire-arms, and standing-armies, how much easier were 
such a hunt! Perhaps in the most thickly-peopled coun- 
try, some three days annually might suffice to shoot all 
the able-bodied Paupers that had accumulated within the 
year. Let Governments think of this. The expense 
were trifling; nay the very carcasses would pay it. 
Have them salted and barreled; could not you victual 
therewith, if not Army and Navy, yet richly such infirm 
Paupers, in workhouses and elsewhere, as enlightened 
Charity, dreading no evil of them, might see good to 
keep alive?' 

' And yet/ writes he farther on, ' there must be some- 
thing wrong. A full-formed Horse will, in any market, 
bring from twenty to as high as two-hundred Friedrichs 
d'or: such is his worth to the world. A full- formed 
Man is not only worth nothing to the world, but the 
world could afford him a round sum would he simply 
engage to go and hang himself. ' Nevertheless, which of 
the two was the more cunningly-devised article, even as 
an Engine? Good Heavens! A white European Man, 
standing on his two Legs, with his two five-fingered 
Hands at his shackle-bones, and miraculous Head on his 



THE PHCENIX 205 

shoulders, is worth, I should say, from fifty to a hun- 
dred Horses ' ! 

* True, thou Gold-Hofrath/ cries the Professor else- 
where : * too crowded indeed ! Meanwhile, what portion 
of this inconsiderable terraqueous Globe have ye actually 
tilled and delved, till it will grow no more? How thick 
stands your Population in the Pampas and Savannas of 
America; round ancient Carthage, and in the interior of 
Africa ; on both slopes of the Altaic chain, in the central 
Platform of Asia; in Spain, Greece, Turkey, Crim Tar- 
tary, the Curragh of Kildare? One man, in one year, 
as I have understood it, if you lend him Earth, will 
feed himself and nine others. Alas, where now are the 
Hengsts and Alarics of our still-glowing, still-expanding 
Europe; who, when their home is grown too narrow, will 
enlist, and, like Fire-pillars, guide onwards those super- 
fluous masses of indomitable living Valor; equipped, not 
now with the battle-ax and war-chariot, but with the 
steam-engine and ploughshare? Where are they? — Pre- 
serving their Game ! ' 



CHAPTER V 

THE PHCENIX 

Putting which four singular Chapters together, and 
alongside of them numerous hints, and even direct utter- 
ances, scattered over these Writings of his, we come 
upon the startling yet not quite unlooked-for conclusion, 
that Teufelsdrbckh is one of those who consider Society, 
properly so called, to be as good as extinct; and that 
only the gregarious feelings, and old inherited habitudes, 
at this juncture, hold us from Dispersion, and universal, 
national, civil, domestic and personal war! He says 



206 SARTOR RESARTUS 

expressly : ' For the last three centuries, above all for 
the last three quarters of a century, that same Peri- 
cardial Nervous Tissue (as we named it) of Religion, 
where lies the Life-essence of Society, has been smote-at 
and perforated, needfully and needlessly; till now it is 
quite rent into shreds ; and Society, long pining, diabetic, 
consumptive, can be regarded as defunct; for those 
spasmodic, galvanic sprawlings are not life; neither 
indeed will they endure, galvanize as you may, beyond 
two days.' 

' Call ye that a Society,' cries he again, ' where there 
is no longer any Social Idea extant; not so much as the 
Idea of a common Home, but only of a common over- 
crowded Lodging-house? Where each, isolated, regard- 
less of his neighbor, turned against his neighbor, clutches 
what he can get, and cries " Mine ! " and calls it Peace, 
because, in the cut-purse and cut-throat Scramble, no 
steel knives, but only a far cunninger sort, can be 
employed? Where Friendship, Communion, has become 
an incredible tradition; and your holiest Sacramental 
Supper is a smoking Tavern Dinner, with Cook for 
Evangelist? Where your Priest has no tongue but for 
plate-licking: and your high Guides and Governors can- 
not guide; but on all hands hear it passionately pro- 
claimed : Laissez faire; Leave us alone of your guidance, 
such light is darker than darkness; eat you your wages, 
and sleep! 

' Thus, too/ continues he, ' does an observant eye 
discern everywhere that saddest spectacle: The Poor 
perishing, like neglected, foundered Draught-Cattle, of 
Hunger and Over- work; the Rich, still more wretchedly, 
of Idleness, Satiety, and Over-growth. The Highest in 
rank, at length, without honor from the Lowest ; scarcely, 
with a little mouth-honor, as from tavern-waiters who 
expect to put it in the bill. Once-sacred Symbols flut- 



THE PHCENIX 207 

tering as empty Pageants, whereof men grudge even the 
expense ; a World becoming dismantled : in one word, the 
Church fallen speechless, from obesity and apoplexy; 
the State shrunken into a Police-Office, straitened to 
get its pay ! ' 

We might ask, are there many ' observant eyes,' be- 
longing to practical men in England or elsewhere, which 
have descried these phenomena; or is it only from the 
mystic elevation of a German Wahngasse that such won- 
ders are visible ? Teuf elsdrockh contends that the aspect 
of a * deceased or expiring Society ' fronts us every- 
where, so that whoso runs may read. * What, for ex- 
ample,' says he, ' is the universally-arrogated Virtue, 
almost the sole remaining Catholic Virtue, of these days ? 
For some half century, it has been the thing you name 
" Independence." Suspicion of " Servility," of rever- 
ence for Superiors, the very dogleech is anxious to dis- 
avow. Fools ! Were your Superiors worthy to govern, 
and you worthy to obey, reverence for them were even 
your only possible freedom. Independence, in all kinds, 
is rebellion; if unjust rebellion, why parade it, and 
everywhere prescribe it? * 

But what then ? Are we returning, as Rousseau prayed, 
to the state of Nature? 'The Soul Politic having de- 
parted/ says Teufelsdrockh, ' what can follow but that 
the Body Politic be decently interred, to avoid putres- 
cence? Liberals, Economists, Utilitarians enough I see 
marching with its bier, and chanting loud paeans, to- 
wards the funeral-pile, where, amid wailings from some, 
and saturnalian revelries from the most, the venerable 
Corpse is to be burnt. Or, in plain words, that these 
men, Liberals, Utilitarians, or whatsoever they are 
called, will ultimately carry their point, and dissever 
and destroy most existing Institutions of Society, seems 
a thing which has some time ago ceased to be doubtful. 



208 SARTOR RESARTUS 

* Do we not see a little subdivision of the grand Utili- 
tarian Armament come to light even in insulated Eng- 
land ? A living nucleus, that will attract and grow, does 
at length appear there also; and under curious phasis; 
properly as the inconsiderable fag-end, and so far in the 
rear of the others as to fancy itself the van. Our 
European Mechanizers are a sect of ^oundless diffusion, 
activity, and cooperative spirit: has not Utilitarianism 
nourished in high places of Thought, here among our- 
selves, and in every European country, at some time or 
other, within the last fifty years? If now in all coun- 
tries, except perhaps England, it has ceased to flourish, 
or indeed toexist, among Thinkers, and sunk to Journal- 
ists and the popular mass, — who sees not that, as hereby 
it no longer preaches, so the reason is, it now needs no 
Preaching, but is in full universal Action, the doctrine 
everywhere known, and enthusiastically laid to heart? 
The fit pabulum, in these times, for a certain rugged 
workshop intellect and heart, nowise without their cor- 
responding workshop strength and ferocity, it requires 
but to be stated in such scenes to make proselytes 
enough. — Admirably calculated for destroying, only not 
for rebuilding ! It spreads like a sort of Dog-madness ; 
till the whole World-kennel will be rabid: then woe to 
the Huntsmen, with or without their whips ! They 
should have given the quadrupeds water,' adds he ; ' the 
water, namely, of Knowledge and of Life, while it was 
yet time/ 

Thus, if Professor Teufelsdrockh can be relied on, we 
are at this hour in a most critical condition; beleaguered 
by that boundless ' Armament of Mechanizers ' and Un- 
believers, threatening to strip us bare ! ' The World,' 
says he, ' as it needs must, is under a process of devas- 
tation and waste, which, whether by silent assiduous 
corrosion, or open quicker combustion, as the case 



THE PHGENIX 209 

chances, will effectually enough annihilate the past 
Forms of Society; replace them with what it may. For 
the present, it is contemplated that when man's whole 
Spiritual interests are once divested, these innumerable 
stript-off Garments shall mostly be burnt; but the 
sounder Rags among them be quilted together into one 
huge Irish watch-coat for the defense of the Body only ! * 
— This, we think, is but Job's-news to the humane 
reader. 

' Nevertheless/ cries Teufelsdrockh, ' who can hinder 
it; who is there that can clutch into the wheelspokes of 
Destiny, and say to the Spirit of the Time: Turn back, 
I command thee? — Wiser were it that we yielded to the 
Inevitable and Inexorable, and accounted even this the 
best.' 

Nay, might not an attentive Editor, drawing his own 
inferences from what stands written, conjecture that 
Teufelsdrockh individually had yielded to this same ' In- 
evitable and Inexorable ' heartily enough ; and now sat 
waiting the issue, with his natural diabolico-angelical 
Indifference, if not even Placidity? Did we not hear 
him complain that the World was a ' huge Ragfair/ and 
the * rags and tatters of old Symbols ' were raining-down 
everywhere, like to drift him in, and suffocate him? 
What with those ' unhunted Helots ' of his ; and the 
uneven sic vos non vobis pressure and hard-crashing 
collision he is pleased to discern in existing things; 
what with the so hateful ' empty Masks/ full of beetles 
and spiders, yet glaring out on him, from their glass 
eyes, ' with a ghastly affectation of life/ — we feel en- 
titled to conclude him even willing that much should 
be thrown to the Devil, so it were but done gently! 
Safe himself in that ' Pinnacle of Weissnichtwo/ he 
would consent, with a tragic solemnity, that the monster 
Utilitaria, held back, indeed, and moderated by nose- 



210 SARTOR RESARTUS 

rings, halters, foot-shackles, and every conceivable modi- 
fication of rope, should go forth to do her work; — to 
tread down old ruinous Palaces and Temples with her 
broad hoof, till the whole were trodden down, that new 
and better might be built! Remarkable in this point of 
view are the following sentences. 

'Society/ says he, 'is not dead: that Carcass, which 
you call dead Society, is but her mortal coil which she 
has shuffled-off, to assume a nobler; she herself, through 
perpetual metamorphoses, in fairer and fairer develop- 
ment, has to live till Time also merge in Eternity. 
Wheresoever two or three Living Men are gathered to- 
gether, there is Society; or there it will be, with its 
cunning mechanisms and stupendous structures, over- 
spreading this little Globe, and reaching upwards to 
Heaven and downwards to Gehenna: for always, under 
one or the other figure, it has two authentic Revelations, 
of a God and of a Devil; the Pulpit, namely, and the 
Gallows.' 

Indeed, we already heard him speak of ' Religion, in 
unnoticed nooks, weaving for herself new Vestures ' ; — 
Teufelsdrockh himself being one of the loom-treadles? 
Elsewhere he quotes without censure that strange aphor- 
ism of Saint-Simon's, concerning which and whom so 
much were to be said: ' Uage d'or, qu'une aveugle tra- 
dition a place jusqu'ici dans le passe, est devant nous; 
The golden age, which a blind tradition has hitherto 
placed in the Past, is Before us.' — But listen again: 

' When the Phoenix is fanning her funeral pyre, will 
there not be sparks flying ! Alas, some millions of men, 
and among them such as a Napoleon, have already been 
licked into that high-eddying Flame, and like moths con- 
sumed there. Still also have we to fear that incautious 
beards will get singed. 

' For the rest, in what year of grace such Phoenix- 



THE PHGENIX 211 

cremation will be completed, you need not ask. The 
law of Perseverance is among the deepest in man: by 
nature he hates change ; seldom will he quit his old house 
till it has actually fallen about his ears. Thus have I 
seen Solemnities linger as Ceremonies, sacred Symbols 
as idle Pageants, to the extent of three-hundred years 
and more after all life and sacredness had evaporated 
out of them. And then, finally, what time the Phoenix 
Death-Birth itself will require, depends on unseen con- 
tingencies. — Meanwhile, would Destiny offer Mankind, 
that after, say two centuries of convulsion and confla- 
gration, more or less vivid, the fire-creation should be 
accomplished, and we to find ourselves again in a Living 
Society, and no longer fighting but working, — were it 
not perhaps prudent in Mankind to strike the bargain ? ' 
Thus is Teufelsdrockh content that old sick Society 
should be deliberately burnt (alas, with quite other fuel 
than spice- wood) ; in the faith that she is p Phoenix ; 
and that a new heavenborn young one will rise out of 
her ashes ! We ourselves, restricted to the duty of In- 
dicator, shall forbear commentary. Meanwhile, will 
not the judicious reader shake his head, and reproach- 
fully, yet more in sorrow than in anger, say or think: 
From a Doctor utriusque Juris, titular Professor in a 
University, and man to whom hitherto, for his services, 
Society, bad as she is, has given not only food and 
raiment (of a kind), but books, tobacco and gukguk, we 
expected more gratitude to his benefactress; and less of 
a blind trust in the future, which resembles that rather 
of a philosophical Fatalist and Enthusiast, than of a 
solid householder paying scot-and-lot in a Christian 
country. 



212 SARTOR RESARTUS 

CHAPTER VI 

OLD CLOTHES 

As mentioned above, Teufelsdrdckh, though a sanscu- 
lottist, is in practice probably the politest man extant: 
his whole heart and life are penetrated and informed 
with the spirit of politeness; a noble natural Courtesy 
shines through him, beautifying his vagaries; like sun- 
light, making a rosy-fingered, rainbow-dyed Aurora out 
of mere aqueous clouds; nay brightening London-smoke 
itself into gold vapor, as from the crucible of an alche- 
mist. Hear in what earnest though fantastic wise he 
expresses himself on this head: 

' Shall Courtesy be done only to the rich, and only 
by the rich? In Good-breeding, which differs, if at all, 
from High-breeding, only as it gracefully remembers 
the rights of others, rather than gracefully insists on 
its own rights, I discern no special connection with 
wealth or birth: but rather that it lies in human nature 
itself, and is due from all men towards all men. Of a 
truth, were your Schoolmaster at his post, and worth 
anything when there, this, with so much else, would be 
reformed. Nay, each man were then also his neighbor's 
schoolmaster ; till at length a rude-visaged, unmannered 
Peasant could no more be met with, than a Peasant un- 
acquainted with botanical Physiology, or who felt not 
that the clod he broke was created in Heaven. 

' For whether thou bear a scepter or a sledge-hammer, 
art not thou alive; is not this thy brother alive? 
" There is but one temple in the world," says Novalis, 
" and that temple is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier 
than this high Form. Bending before men is a rever- 



OLD CLOTHES 213 

ence done to this Revelation in the Flesh. We touch 
Heaven, when we lay our hands on a human Body." 

' On which ground, I would fain carry it farther than 
most do; and whereas the English Johnson only bowed 
to every Clergyman, or man with a shovel-hat, I would 
bow to every Man with any sort of hat, or with no hat 
whatever. Is not he a Temple, then; the visible Mani- 
festation and Impersonation of the Divinity? And yet, 
alas, such indiscriminate bowing serves not. For there 
is a Devil dwells in man, as well as a Divinity; and too 
often the bow is but pocketed by the former. It would 
go to the pocket of Vanity (which is your clearest phasis 
of the Devil, in these times) ; therefore must we with- 
hold it. 

' The gladder am I, on the other hand, to do reverence 
to those Shells and outer Husks of the Body, wherein no 
devilish passion any longer lodges, but only the pure 
emblem and effigies of Man: I mean, to Empty, or even 
to Cast Clothes. Nay, is it not to Clothes that most 
men do reverence: to the fine frogged broadcloth, nowise 
to the " straddling animal with bandy legs " which it 
holds, and makes a Dignitary of? Who ever saw any 
Lord my-lorded in tattered blanket fastened with wooden 
skewer? Nevertheless, I say, there is in such worship a 
shade of hypocrisy, a practical deception: for how often 
does the Body appropriate what was meant for the Cloth 
only! Whoso would avoid falsehood, which is the es- 
sence of all Sin, will perhaps see good to take a different 
course. That reverence which cannot act without ob- 
struction and perversion when the Clothes are full, may 
have free course when they are empty. Even as, for 
Hindoo Worshipers, the Pagoda is not less sacred than 
the God; so do I too worship the hollow cloth Garment 
with equal fervor, as when it contained the Man: nay, 



214 SARTOR RESARTUS 

with more; for I now fear no deception, of myself or of 
others. 

' Did not King Toomtaba-rd, or, in other words, John 
Baliol, reign long over Scotland; the man John Baliol 
being quite gone, and only the " Toom Tabard " (Empty 
Gown) remaining? What still dignity dwells in a suit 
of Cast Clothes ! How meekly it bears its honors ! No 
Haughty looks, no scornful gesture: silent and serene, it 
fronts the world; neither demanding worship, nor afraid 
to miss it. The Hat still carries the physiognomy of its 
Head : but the vanity and the stupidity, and goose-speech 
which was the sign of these two, are gone. The Coat- 
arm is stretched out, but not to strike; the Breeches, in 
modest simplicity, depend at ease, and now at last have 
a graceful flow; the Waistcoat hides no evil passion, 
no riotous desire; hunger or thirst now dwells not in it. 
Thus all is purged from the grossness of sense, from 
the carking cares and foul vices of the World; and rides 
there, on its Clothes-horse; as,*on a Pegasus, might some 
skyey Messenger, or purified Apparition, visiting our 
low Earth. 

' Often, while I sojourned in that monstrous tuberosity 
of Civilized Life, the Capital of England ; and meditated, 
and questioned Destiny, under that ink-sea of vapor, 
black, thick, and multifarious as Spartan broth; and 
was one lone soul amid those grinding millions; — often 
have I turned into their Old-Clothes Market to worship. 
With awe-struck heart I walk through that Monmouth 
Street, with its empty Suits, as through a Sanhedrim of 
stainless Ghosts. Silent are they, but expressive in their 
silence: the past witnesses and instruments of Woe and 
Joy, of Passions, Virtues, Crimes, and all the fathomless 
tumult of Good and Evil in " the Prison men call Life." 
Friends ! trust not the heart of that man for whom Old 
Clothes are not venerable. Watch, too, with reverence, 



OLD CLOTHES 215 

that bearded Jewish High-priest, who with hoarse voice, 
like some Angel of Doom, summons them from the four 
winds ! On his head, like the Pope, he has three Hats, — 
a real triple tiara; on either hand are the similitude of 
wings, whereon the summoned Garments come to alight; 
and ever, as he slowly cleaves the air, sounds forth his 
deep fateful note, as if through a trumpet he were pro- 
claiming: "Ghosts of Life, come to Judgment !" Reck 
not, ye fluttering Ghosts : he will purify you in his Purga- 
tory, with fire and with water ; and, one day, new-created 
ye shall reappear. O, let him in whom the flame of 
Devotion is ready to go out, who has never worshiped, 
and knows not what to worship, pace and repace, with 
austerest thought, the pavement of Monmouth Street, 
and say whether his heart and his eyes still continue dry. 
If Field Lane, with its long fluttering rows of yellow 
handkerchiefs, be a Dionysius' Ear, where, in stifled 
jarring hubbub, we hear the Indictment which Poverty 
and Vice bring against lazy Wealth, that it has left 
them there cast-out and trodden under foot of Want, 
Darkness and the Devil, — then is Monmouth Street a 
Mirza's Hill, where, in motley vision, the whole Pageant 
of Existence passes awfully before us ; with its wail and 
jubilee, mad loves and mad hatreds, church-bells and 
gallows-ropes, farce-tragedy, beast-godhood, — the Bed- 
lam of Creation ! ' 

To most men, as it does to ourselves, all this will seem 
overcharged. We too have walked through Monmouth 
Street; but with little feeling of 'Devotion'; probably 
in part because the contemplative process is so fatally 
broken in upon by the brood of money-changers who 
nestle in that Church, and importune the worshipper 
with merely secular proposals. Whereas Teufelsdrockh 
might be in that happy middle state, which leaves to the 



216 SARTOR RESARTUS 

Clothes-broker no hope either of sale or of purchase, 
and so be allowed to linger there without molestation. — 
Something we would have given to see the little philo- 
sophical figure, with its steeple-hat and loose flowing 
skirts, and eyes in a fine frenzy, ' pacing and repacing 
in austerest thought ' that foolish Street ; which to him 
was a true Delphic avenue, and supernatural Whisper- 
ing-gallery, where the ' Ghosts of Life ' rounded strange 
secrets in his ear. O thou philosophic Teufelsdrockh, 
that listenest while others only gabble, and with thy 
quick tympanum hearest the grass grow! 

At the same time, is it not strange that, in Paper-bag 
Documents destined for an English work, there exists 
nothing like an authentic diary of this his sojourn in 
London; and of his Meditations among the Clothes- 
shops only the obscurest emblematic shadows? Neither, 
in conversation (for, indeed, he was not a man to pester 
you with his Travels), have we heard him more than 
allude to the subject. 

For the rest, however, it cannot be uninteresting that 
we here find how early the significance of Clothes had 
dawned on the now so distinguished Clothes-Professor. 
Might we but fancy it to have been even in Monmouth 
Street, at the bottom of our own English ' ink-sea,' that 
this remarkable Volume first took being, and shot forth 
its salient point in his soul, — as in Chaos did the Egg 
of Eros, one day to be hatched into a Universe! 



' CHAPTER VII 

ORGANIC FILAMENTS 

For us, who happen to live while the World-Phcenix 
is burning herself, and burning so slowly that, as Teu- 



ORGANIC FILAMENTS 217 

felsdrockh calculates, it were a handsome bargain would 
she engage to have done ' within two centuries/ there 
seems to lie but an ashy prospect. Not altogether so, 
however, does the Professor figure it. * In the living 
subject,' says he, 'change is wont to be gradual: thus, 
while the serpent sheds its old skin, the new is already 
formed beneath. Little knowest thou of the burning of 
a World-Phoenix, who fanciest that she must first burn- 
out, and lie as a dead cinerous heap; and therefrom the 
young one start-up by miracle, and fly heavenward. Far 
otherwise! In that Fire-whirlwind, Creation and De- 
struction proceed together; ever as the ashes of the Old 
are blown about, do organic filaments of the New mys- 
teriously spin themselves: and amid the rushing and 
the waving of the Whirlwind-element come tones of a 
melodious Deathsong, which end not but in tones of a 
more melodious Birthsong. Nay, look into the Fire- 
whirlwind with thy own eyes, and thou wilt see.' Let 
us actually look, then: to poor individuals, who cannot 
expect to live two centuries, those same organic filaments, 
mysteriously spinning themselves, will be the best part 
of the spectacle. First, therefore, this of Mankind in 
general : 

' In vain thou deniest it/ says the Processor ; ' thou art 
my Brother. Thy very Hatred, thy very Envy, those 
foolish Lies thou tellest of me in thy splenetic humor: 
what is all this but an inverted Sympathy? Were I a 
Steam-engine, wouldst thou take the trouble to tell lies 
of me ? Not thou ! I should grind all unheeded, whether 
badly or well. 

' Wondrous truly are the bonds that unite us one and 
all; whether by the soft binding of Love, or the iron 
chaining of Necessity, as we like to choose it. More 
than once have I said to myself, of some perhaps whim- 
sically strutting Figure, such as provokes whimsical 



218 SARTOR RESARTUS 

thoughts : " Wert thou, my little Brotherkin, suddenly 
covered-up within the largest imaginable Glass-bell, — 
what a thing it were, not for thyself only, but for the 
World! Post Letters, more or fewer, from all the four 
winds, impinge against thy Glass walls, but have to 
drop unread: neither from within comes there question 
or response into any Postbag; thy Thoughts fall into 
no friendly ear or heart, thy Manufacture into no pur- 
chasing hand: thou art no longer a circulating venous- 
arterial Heart, that, taking and giving, circulatest 
through all Space and all Time: there has a Hole fallen- 
out in the immeasurable, universal World-tissue, which 
must be darned-up again ! " 

' Such venous-arterial circulation, of Letters, verbal 
Messages, paper and other Packages, going out from 
him and coming in, are s blood-circulation, visible to the 
eye: but the finer nervous circulation, by which all 
things, the minutest that he does, minutely influence all 
men, and the very look of his face blesses or curses 
whomso it lights on, and so generates ever new blessing 
or new cursing : all this you cannot see, but only imagine. 
I say, there is not a red Indian, hunting by Lake Winni- 
pic, can quarrel with his squaw, but the whole world 
must smart for it: will not the price of beaver rise? It 
is a mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble 
from my hand alters the center of gravity of the Uni- 
verse. 

' If now an existing generation of men stand so 
woven together, not less indissolubly does generation 
with generation. Hast thou ever meditated on that word, 
Tradition: how we inherit not Life only, but all the 
garniture and form of Life; and work, and speak, and 
even think and feel, as our Fathers, and primeval grand- 
fathers, from the beginning, have given it us? — Who 
printed thee, for example, this unpretending Volume on 



ORGANIC FILAMENTS 219 

the Philosophy of Clothes? Not the Herren Stillsch- 
weigen and Company; but Cadmus of Thebes, Faust 
of Mentz, and innumerable others whom thou knowest 
not. Had there been no Moesogothic Ulfila, there had 
been no English Shakespeare, or a different one. Sim- 
pleton ! it was Tubalcain that made thy very Tailor's 
needle, and sewed that court-suit of thine. 

' Yes, truly, if Nature is one, and a living indivisible 
whole, much more is Mankind, the Image that reflects 
and creates Nature, without which Nature were not. 
As palpable life-streams in that wondrous Individual 
Mankind, among so many life-streams that are not pal- 
pable, flow on those main-currents of what we call 
Opinion ; as preserved in Institutions, Polities, Churches, 
above all in Books. Beautiful it is to understand and 
know that a Thought did never yet die; that as thou, 
the originator thereof, hast gathered it and created it 
from the whole Past, so thou wilt transmit it to the whole 
Future. It is thus that the heroic heart, the seeing eye 
of the first times, still feels and sees in us of the latest; 
that the Wise Man stands ever encompassed, and spirit- 
ually embraced, by a cloud of witnesses and brothers; 
and there is a living, literal Communion of Saints, wide 
as the World itself, and as the History of the World. 

' Noteworthy also, and serviceable for the progress 
of this same Individual, wilt thou find his subdivision 
into Generations. Generations are as the Days of toil- 
some Mankind: Death and Birth are the vesper and the 
matin bells, that summon Mankind to sleep, and to rise 
refreshed for new advancement. What the Father has 
made, the Son can make and enjoy; but has also work 
of his own appointed him. Thus all things wax, and roll 
onwards; Arts, Establishments, Opinions, nothing is 
completed, but ever completing. Newton has learned to 
see what Kepler saw; but there is also a fresh heaven- 



220 SARTOR RESARTUS 






derived force in Newton; he must mount to still higher 
points of vision. So too the Hebrew Lawgiver is, in 
due time, followed by an Apostle of the Gentiles. In 
the business of Destruction, as this also is from time 
to time a necessary work, thou findest a like sequence 
and perseverance: for Luther it was as yet hot enough 
to stand by that burning of the Pope's Bull; Voltaire 
could not warm himself at the glimmering ashes, but 
required quite other fuel. Thus likewise, I note, the 
English Whig has, in the second generation, become an 
English Radical; who, in the third again, it is to be 
hoped, will become an English Rebuilder. Find Man- 
kind where thou wilt, thou findest it in living movement, 
in progress faster or slower: the Phoenix soars aloft, 
hovers with outstretched wings, filling Earth with her 
music ; or, as now, she sinks, and with spheral swan-song 
immolates herself in flame, that she |nay soar the higher 
and sing the clearer/ 

Let the friends of social order, in such a disastrous 
period, lay this to heart, and derive from it any little 
comfort they can. We subjoin another passage, con- 
cerning Titles: 

' Remark, not without surprise,' says Teuf elsdrockh, 
* how all high Titles of Honor come hitherto from Fight- 
ing. Your Herzog (Duke, Dux) is Leader of Armies; 
your Earl (Jarl) is Strong Man; your Marshal, cavalry 
Horse-shoer. A Millennium, or reign of Peace and 
Wisdom, having from of old been prophesied, and be- 
coming now daily more and more indubitable, may it 
not be apprehended that such Fighting-titles will cease 
to be palatable, and new and higher need to be devised? 

' The only Title wherein I, with confidence, trace 
eternity, is that of King. Konig (King), anciently 
Konning, means Ken-ning (Cunning), or which is the 



ORGANIC FILAMENTS 221 

same thing, Can-ning. Ever must the Sovereign of 
Mankind be fitly entitled King/ 

' Well, also,' says he elsewhere, ' was it written by 
Theologians: a King rules by divine right. He carries 
in him an authority from God, or man will never give it 
him. Can I choose my own King? I can choose my 
own King Popinjay, and play what farce or tragedy I 
may with him: but he who is to be my Ruler, whose will 
is to be higher than my will, was chosen for me in 
Heaven. Neither except in such Obedience to the 
Heaven-chosen is Freedom so much as conceivable/ 

The Editor will here admit that, among all the won- 
drous provinces of Teufelsdrockh's spiritual world, there 
is none he walks in with such astonishment, hesitation, 
and even pain, as in the Political. How, with our Eng- 
lish love of Ministry and Opposition, and that generous 
conflict of Parties, mind warming itself against mind in 
their mutual wrestle for the Public Good, by which 
wrestle, indeed, is our invaluable Constitution kept 
warm and alive; how shall we domesticate ourselves in 
this spectral Necropolis, or rather City both of the Dead 
and of the Unborn, where the Present seems little other 
than an inconsiderate Film dividing the Past and the 
Future? In those dim long-drawn expanses, all is so 
immeasurable; much so disastrous, ghastly; your very 
radiances and straggling light-beams have a super- 
natural character. And then with such an indifference, 
such a prophetic peacefulness (accounting the inevitably 
coming as already here, to him all one whether it be 
distant by centuries or only by days), does he sit; — and 
live, you would say, rather in any other age than in his 
own ! It is our painful duty to announce, or repeat, that, 
looking into this man, we discern a deep, silent, slow- 
burning, inextinguishable Radicalism, such as fills us 
with shuddering admiration. 



222 SARTOR RESARTUS 






Thus, for example, he appears to make little even of 
the Elective Franchise; at least so we interpret the 
following: 'Satisfy yourselves/ he says, 'by universal, 
indubitable experiment, even as ye are now doing or 
will do, whether Freedom, heavenborn and leading 
heavenward, and so vitally essential for us all, cannot 
peradventure be mechanically hatched and brought to 
light in that same Ballot-Box of yours; or at worst, in 
some other discoverable or devisable Box, or Steam- 
mechanism. It were a mighty convenience; and beyond 
all feats of manufacture witnessed hitherto/ Is Teu- 
felsdrockh acquainted with the British Constitution, 
even slightly ? — He says, under another figure : ' But 
after all, were the problem, as indeed it now everywhere 
is, To rebuild your old House from the top downwards 
(since you must live in it the while), what better, what 
other, than the Representative Machine will serve your 
turn ? Meanwhile, however, mock me not with the name 
of Free, " when you have but knit-up my chains into 
ornamental festoons." ' — Or what will any member of 
the Peace Society make of such an assertion as this: 
' The lower people everywhere desire War. Not so 
unwisely; there is then a demand for lower people — to 
be shot!' 

Gladly, therefore, do we emerge from those soul- 
confusing labyrinths of speculative Radicalism, into 
somewhat clearer regions. Here, looking round, as was 
our hest, for ' organic filaments,' we ask, May not this, 
touching ' Hero-worship,' be of the number ? It seems 
of a cheerful character; yet so quaint, so mystical, one 
knows not what, or how little, may lie under it. Our 
readers shall look with their own eyes: 

' True is it that, in these days, man can do almost all 
things, only not obey. True likewise that whoso cannot 
obey cannot be free, still less bear rule; he that is the 



ORGANIC FILAMENTS 223 



inferior of nothing, can be the superior of nothing, the 
equal of nothing. Nevertheless, believe not that man 
has lost his faculty of Reverence; that if it slumber in 
him, it has gone dead. Painful for man is that same 
rebellious Independence, when it has become inevitable; 
only in loving companionship with his fellows does he 
feel safe; only in reverently bowing down before the 
Higher does he feel himself exalted. 

' Or what if the character of our so troublous Era lay 
even in this: that man had forever cast away Fear, 
which is the lower; but not yet risen into perennial Rev- 
erence, which is the higher and highest? 

' Meanwhile, observe with joy, so cunningly has Na- 
ture ordered it, that whatsoever man ought to obey, he 
cannot but obey. Before no faintest revelation of the 
Godlike did he ever stand irreverent; least of all, when 
the Godlike showed itself revealed in his fellow-man. 
Thus is there a true religious Loyalty forever rooted in 
his heart; nay in all ages, even in ours, it manifests 
itself as a more or less orthodox Hero-worship. In 
which fact, that Hero-worship exists, has existed, and 
will forever exist, universally among Mankind, mayest 
thou discern the corner-stone of living-rock, whereon 
all Polities for the remotest time may stand secure/ 

Do our readers discern any such corner-stone, or even 
so much as what Teufelsdrockh is looking at? He ex- 
claims, ' Or hast thou forgotten Paris and Voltaire ? 
How the aged, withered man, though but a Sceptic, 
Mocker, and millinery Court-poet, yet because even he 
seemed the Wisest, Best, could drag mankind at his 
chariot-wheels, so that princes coveted a smile from him, 
and the loveliest of France would have laid their hair 
beneath his feet! All Paris was one vast Temple of 
Hero-worship; though their Divinity, moreover, was of 
feature too apish. 



224 SARTOR RESARTUS 

' But if such things/ continues he, ' were done in the 
dry tree, what will be done in the green? If, in the 
most parched season of Man's History, in the most 
parched spot of Europe, when Parisian life was at best 
but a scientific Hortus Siccus, bedizened with some 
Italian Gumflowers, such virtue could come out of it; 
what is to be looked for when Life again waves leafy 
and bloomy, and your Hero-Divinity shall have nothing 
apelike, but be wholly human? Know that there is in 
man a quite indestructible Reverence for whatsoever 
holds of Heaven, or even plausibly counterfeits such 
holding. Show the dullest clodpole, show the haughtiest 
featherhead, that a soul higher than himself is actually 
here; were his knees stiffened into brass, he must down 
and worship/ 

Organic filaments, of a more authentic sort, mysteri* 
ously spinning themselves, some will perhaps discover in 
the following passage: 

' There is no Church, sayest thou ? The voice of 
Prophecy has gone dumb? This is even what I dis- 
pute: but in any case, hast thou not still Preaching 
enough? A Preaching Friar settles himself in every 
village; and builds a pulpit, which he calls Newspaper. 
Therefrom he preaches what most momentous doctrine 
is in him, for man's salvation; and dost not thou listen, 
and believe? Look well, thou seest everywhere a new 
Clergy of the Mendicant Orders, some bare-footed, some 
almost bare-backed, fashion itself into shape, and teach 
and preach, zealously enough, for copper alms and the 
love of God. These break in pieces the ancient idols; 
and, though themselves too often reprobate, as idol- 
breakers are wont to be, mark out the sites of new 
Churches, where the true God-ordained, that are to 
follow, may find audience, and minister. Said I not, 



ORGANIC FILAMENTS 225 

Before the old skin was shed, the new had formed itself 
beneath it?' 

Perhaps also in the following; wherewith we now 
hasten to knit-up this raveled sleeve: 

' But there is no Religion ? ' reiterates the Professor. 
' Fool ! I tell thee, there is. Hast thou well considered 
all that lies in this immeasurable froth-ocean we name 
Literature? Fragments of a genuine Church-i/omz- 
letic lie scattered there, which Time will assort: nay 
fractions even of a Liturgy could I point out. And 
knowest thou no Prophet, even in the vesture, environ- 
ment, and dialect of this age? None to whom the 
Godlike had revealed itself, through all meanest and 
highest forms of the Common; and by him been again 
prophetically revealed: in whose inspired melody, even 
in these rag-gathering and rag-burning days, Man's Life 
again begins, were it but afar off, to be divine? Know- 
est thou none such? I know him, and name him — 
Goethe. 

'But thou as yet standest in no Temple; joinest in 
no P s aim- wor ship ; feelest well that, where there is no 
ministering Priest, the people perish? Be of comfort! 
Thou art not alone,' if thou have Faith. Spake we not 
of a Communion of Saints, unseen, yet not unreal, ac- 
companying and brother-like embracing thee, so thou 
be worthy? Their heroic Sufferings rise up melodiously 
together to Heaven, out of all lands, and out of all 
times, as a sacred Miserere; their heroic Actions also, 
as a boundless everlasting Psalm of Triumph. Neither 
say that thou hast now no Symbol of the Godlike. Is 
not God's Universe a Symbol of the Godlike; is not 
Immensity a Temple; is not Man's History, and Men's 
History, a perpetual Evangel? Listen, and for organ- 
music thou wilt ever, as of old, hear the Morning Stars 
sing together/ 



226 SARTOR RESARTUS 

CHAPTER VIII 

NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM 

It is in his stupendous Section, headed Natural Super- 
naturalism, that the Professor first becomes a Seer; 
and, after long effort, such as we have witnessed, finally 
subdues under his feet this refractory Clothes-Philoso- 
phy, and takes victorious possession thereof. Phan- 
tasms enough he has had to struggle with ; ' Cloth-webs 
and Cob-webs/ of Imperial Mantles, Superannuated 
Symbols, and what not: yet still did he courageously 
pierce through. Nay, worst of all, two quite mysterious, 
world-embracing Phantasms, Time and Space, have 
ever hovered round him, perplexing and bewildering: 
but with these also he now resolutely grapples, these 
also he victoriously rends asunder. In a word, he has 
looked fixedly on Existence, till, one after the other, its 
earthly hulls and garnitures have all melted away; and 
now, to his rapt vision, the interior celestial Holy of 
Holies lies disclosed. 

Here, therefore, properly it is that the Philosophy of 
Clothes attains to Transcendentalism; this last leap, 
can we but clear it, takes us safe into the promised land, 
where Palingenesia, in all senses, may be considered as 
beginning. ' Courage, then ! ' may our Diogenes exclaim, 
with better right than Diogenes the First once did. This 
stupendous Section we, after long painful meditation, 
have found not to be unintelligible ; but, on the contrary, 
to grow clear, nay radiant, and all-illuminating. Let 
the reader, turning on it what utmost force of specula- 
tive intellect is in him, do his part; as we, by judicious 
selection and adjustment, shall study to do ours: 

' Deep has been, and is, the significance of Miracles/ 



NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM 227 

thus quietly begins the Professor; 'far deeper perhaps 
than we imagine. Meanwhile, the question of questions 
were: What specially is a Miracle? To that Dutch, King 
of Siam, an icicle had been a miracle; whoso had car- 
ried with him an air-pump, and vial of vitriolic ether, 
might have worked a miracle. To my Horse, again, who 
unhappily is still more unscientific, do not I work a 
miracle, and magical " Open sesame! " every time I 
please to pay twopence, and open for him an impassable 
Schlagbaum, or shut Turnpike? 

' " But is not a real Miracle simply a violation of the 
Laws of Nature ? " ask several. Whom I answer by this 
new question: Where are the Laws of Nature? To me 
perhaps the rising of one from the dead were no vio- 
lation of these Laws, but a confirmation; were some far 
deeper Law, now first penetrated into, and by Spiritual 
Force, even as the rest have all been, brought to bear on 
us with its Material Force. 

' Here too may some inquire, not without astonish- 
ment: On what ground shall one, that can make Iron 
swim, come and declare that therefore he can teach Re- 
ligion? To us, truly, of the Nineteenth Century, such 
declaration were inept enough; which nevertheless to 
our fathers, of the First Century, was full of meaning. 

' " But is it not the deepest Law of Nature that she be 
constant ? " cries an illuminated class : " Is not the 
Machine of the Universe fixed to move by unalterable 
rules ? " Probable enough, good friends : nay I, too, 
must believe that the God, whom ancient inspired men 
assert to be " without variableness or shadow of turn- 
ing," does indeed never change; that Nature, that the 
Universe, which no one whom it so pleases can be pre- 
vented from calling a Machine, does move by the most 
unalterable rules. And now of you, too, I make the old 
inquiry: What those same unalterable rules, forming 



228 SARTOR RESARTUS 






the complete Statute-Book of Nature, may possibly be? 

' They stand written in our Works of Science, say 
you; in the accumulated records of Man's Experience? 
— Was Man with his Experience present at the Creation, 
then, to see how it all went on? Have any deepest 
scientific individuals yet dived down to the foundations 
of the Universe, and gauged everything there? Did the 
Maker take them into His counsel; that they read His 
groundplan of the incomprehensible All; and can say, 
This stands marked therein, and no more than this? 
Alas, not in anywise! These scientific individuals have 
been nowhere but where we also are; have seen some 
handbreadths deeper than we see into the Deep that is 
infinite, without bottom as without shore. 

' Laplace's Book on the Stars, wherein he exhibits 
that certain Planets, with their Satellites, gyrate round 
our worthy Sun, at a rate and in a course, which, by 
greatest good fortune, he and the like of him have suc- 
ceeded in detecting, — is to me as precious as to another. 
But is this what thou namest " Mechanism of the 
Heavens," and " System of the World " ; this, wherein 
Sirius and the Pleiades, and all Herschel's Fifteen- 
thousand Suns per minute, being left out, some paltry 
handful of Moons, and inert Balls, had been — looked at, 
nicknamed, and marked in the Zodiacal Way-bill ; so that 
we can now prate of their Whereabout ; their How, their 
Why, their What, being hid from us, as in the signless 
Inane ? 

' System of Nature ! To the wisest man, wide as is 
his vision, Nature remains of quite in-finite depth, of 
quite infinite expansion; and all Experience thereof lim- 
its itself to some few computed centuries and measured 
square-miles. The course of Nature's phases, on this 
our little fraction of a Planet, is partially known to 
us: but who knows what deeper courses these depend 



NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM 229 

on; what infinitely larger Cycle (of causes) our little 
Epicycle revolves on? To the Minnow every cranny 
and pebble, and quality and accident, of its little native 
Creek may have become familiar: but does the Minnow 
understand the Ocean Tides and periodic Currents, the 
Trade-winds, and Monsoons, and Moon's Eclipses; by 
all which the condition of its little Creek is regulated, 
and may, from time to time (wwmiraculously enough), 
be quite overset and reversed? Such a minnow is Man; 
his Creek this Planet Earth; his Ocean the immeasur- 
able All; his Monsoons and periodic Currents the mys- 
terious Course of Providence through iEons of iEons. 
' We speak of the Volume of Nature: and truly a 
Volume it is, — whose Author and Writer is God. To 
read it! Dost thou, does man, so much as well know 
the Alphabet thereof? With its Words, Sentences, and 
grand descriptive Pages, poetical and philosophical, 
spread out through Solar Systems, and Thousands of 
Years, we shall not try thee. It is a Volume written 
in celestial hieroglyphs, in the true Sacred-writing; of 
which even Prophets are happy that they can read here 
a line and there a line. As for your Institutes, and 
Academies of Science, they strive bravely; and, from 
amid the thick-crowded, inextricably intertwisted hiero- 
glyphic writing, pick out, by dextrous combination, some 
Letters in the vulgar Character, and therefrom put to- 
gether this and the other economic Recipe, of high avail 
in Practise. That Nature is more than some boundless 
Volume of such Recipes, or huge, well-nigh inexhaust- 
ible Domestic-Cookery Book, of which the whole secret 
will in this manner one day evolve itself, the fewest 
dream. 

' Custom/ continues the Professor, ' doth make do- 
tards of us all. Consider well, thou wilt find that Cus- 



230 SARTOR RESARTUS 

torn is the greatest of Weavers; and weaves air-raiment 
for all the Spirits of the Universe; whereby indeed 
these dwell with us visibly, as ministering servants, in 
our houses and workshops; but their spiritual nature 
becomes, to the most, forever hidden. Philosophy com- 
plains that Custom has hoodwinked us, from the first; 
that we do everything by Custom, even Believe by it; 
that our very Axioms, let us boast of Free-thinking as 
we may, are oftenest simply such Beliefs as we have 
never heard questioned. Nay, what is Philosophy 
throughout but a continual battle against Custom; an 
ever-renewed effort to transcend the sphere of blind 
Custom, and so become Transcendental? 

' Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain-tricks 
of Custom: but of all these, perhaps the cleverest is 
her knack of persuading us that the Miraculous, by 
simple repetition, ceases to be Miraculous. True, it 
is by this means we live ; for man must work as well as 
wonder : and herein is Custom so far a kind nurse, guid- 
ing him to his true benefit. But she is a fond foolish 
nurse, or rather we are false foolish nurselings, when, 
in our resting and reflecting hours, we prolong the same 
deception. Am I to view the Stupendous with stupid 
indifference, because I have seen it twice, or two-hun- 
dred, or two-million times ? There is no reason in Na- 
ture or in Art why I should: unless, indeed, I am a 
mere Work-Machine, for whom the divine gift of 
Thought were no other than the terrestrial gift of Steam 
is to the Steam-engine; a power whereby cotton might 
be spun, and money and money's worth realized. 

' Notable enough too, here as elsewhere, wilt thou 
find the potency of Names; which indeed are but one 
kind of such custom-woven, wonder-hiding Garments. 
Witchcraft, and all manner of Specter-work, and De- 
monology, we have now named Madness and Diseases 



NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM 231 

of the Nerves. Seldom reflecting that still the new 
question comes upon us: What is Madness, what are 
Nerves? Ever, as before, does Madness remain a mys- 
terious-terrific, altogether infernal boiling-up of the 
Nether Chaotic Deep, through this fair-painted Vision 
of Creation, which swims thereon, which we name the 
Real. Was Luther's Picture of the Devil less a Real- 
ity, whether it were formed within the bodily eye, or 
without it? In every the wisest Soul lies a whole world 
of internal Madness, an authentic Demon-Empire; out 
of which, indeed, his world of Wisdom has been cre- 
atively built together, and now rests there, as on its 
dark foundations does a habitable flowery Earth-rind. 

* But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding 
Wonder, as for many other ends, are your two grand 
fundamental world-enveloping Appearances, Space and 
Time. These, as spun and woven for us from before 
Birth itself, to clothe our celestial Me for dwelling here, 
and yet to blind it, — lie all-embracing, as the universal 
canvas, or warp and woof, whereby all minor Illusions, 
in this Phantasm Existence, weave and paint themselves. 
In vain, while here on Earth, shall you endeavor to 
strip them off; you can, at best, but rend them asunder 
for moments, and look through. 

' Fortunatus had a wishing Hat, which when he put 
on, and wished himself Anywhere, behold he was There. 
By this means had Fortunatus triumphed over Space, 
he had annihilated Space; for him there was no Where, 
but all was Here. Were a Hatter to establish himself, 
in the Wahngasse of Weissnichtwo, and make felts of 
this sort for all mankind, what a world we should have 
of it! Still stranger, should, on the opposite side of 
the street, another Hatter establish himself; and, as 
his fellow-craftsman made Space-annihilating Hats, 



232 SARTOR RESARTUS 

make Time-annihilating! Of both would I purchase, 
were it with my last groschen; but chiefly of this lat- 
ter. To clap-on your felt, and, simply by wishing 
that you were Anywhere, straightway to be there! 
Next to clap-on your other felt, and, simply by wishing 
that you were Any when, straightway to be Then! This 
were indeed the grander: shooting at will from the Fire- 
Creation of the World to its Fire-Consummation; here 
historically present in the First Century, conversing 
face to face with Paul and Seneca; there prophetically 
in the Thirty-first, conversing also face to face with 
other Pauls and Senecas, who as yet stand hidden in the 
depth of that late Time ! 

' Or thinkest thou it were impossible, unimaginable ? 
Is the Past annihilated, then, or only past; is the Fu- 
ture non-extant, or only future? Those mystic facul- 
ties of thine, Memory and Hope, already answer : already 
through those mystic avenues, thou the Earth-blinded 
summonest both Past and Future, and communest with 
them, though as yet darkly, and with mute beckonings. 
The curtains of Yesterday drop down, the curtains of 
To-morrow roll up; but Yesterday and To-morrow both 
are. Pierce through the Time-element, glance into the 
Eternal. Believe what thou findest written in the sanc- 
tuaries of Man's Soul, even as all Thinkers, in all ages, 
have devoutly read it there: that Time and Space are 
not God, but creations of God; that with God as it is 
a universal Here, so is it an everlasting Now. 

* And seest thou therein any glimpse of Immortality? 
— O Heaven! Is the white Tomb of our Loved One, 
who died from our arms, and had to be left behind us 
there, which rises in the distance, like a pale, mourn- 
fully receding Milestone, to tell how many toilsome 
uncheered miles we have journeyed on alone, — but a 
pale spectral Illusion! Is the lost Friend still myste- 



NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM 233 

riously Here, even as we are Here mysteriously, with 
God! — Know of a truth that only the Time-shadows 
have perished, or are perishable; that the real Being 
of whatever was, and whatever is, and whatever will 
be, is even now and forever. This, should it unhappily 
seem new, thou mayest ponder at thy leisure; for the 
next twenty years, or the next twenty centuries: believe 
it thou must; understand it thou canst not. 

' That the Thought-forms, Space and Time, wherein, 
once for all, we are sent into this Earth to live, should 
condition and determine our whole Practical reasonings^ 
conceptions, and imagings or imaginings, seems alto- 
gether fit, just, and unavoidable. But that they should, 
furthermore, usurp such sway over pure spiritual Medi- 
tation, and blind us to the wonder everywhere lying 
close on us, seems nowise so. Admit Space and Time 
to their due rank as Forms of Thought; nay even, if 
thou wilt, to their quite undue rank of Realities: and 
consider, then, with thyself how their thin disguises 
hide from us the brightest God-effulgences ! Thus, were 
it not miraculous, could I stretch forth my hand and 
clutch the Sun? Yet thou seest me daily stretch forth 
my hand and therewith clutch many a thing, and swing 
it hither and thither. Art thou a grown baby, then, to 
fancy that the Miracle lies in miles of distance, or in 
pounds avoirdupois of weight; and not to see that the 
true inexplicable God-revealing Miracle lies in this, 
that I can stretch forth my hand at all; that I have 
free Force to clutch aught therewith? Innumerable 
other of this sort are the deceptions, and wonder-hid- 
ing stupefactions, which Space practises on us. 

' Still worse is it with regard to Time. Your grand 
anti-magician, and universal wonder-hider, is this same 
lying Time. Had we but the Time-annihilating Hat, 
to put on for once only, we should see ourselves in a 



234 SARTOR RESARTUS 

World of Miracles, wherein all fabled or authentic 
Thaumaturgy, and feats of Magic, were outdone. But 
unhappily we have not such a Hat; and man, poor fool 
that he is, can seldom and scantily help himself with- 
out one. 

' Were it not wonderful, for instance, had Orpheus, or 
Amphion, built the walls of Thebes by the mere sound 
of his Lyre? Yet tell me, Who built these walls of 
Weissnichtwo ; summoning out all the sandstone rocks, 
to dance along from the Steinbruch (now a huge Troglo- 
dyte Chasm, with frightful green-mantled pools) ; and 
shape themselves into Doric and Ionic pillars, squared 
ashlar houses and noble streets? Was it not the still 
higher Orpheus, or Orpheuses, who, in past centuries, 
by the divine Music of Wisdom, succeeded in civiliz- 
ing Man? Our highest Orpheus walked in Judea, 
eighteen-hundred years ago: his sphere-melody, flowing 
in wild native tones, took captive the ravished souls of 
men; and, being of a true sphere-melody still flows 
and sounds, though now with thousandfold accompani- 
ments, and rich symphonies, through rll our hearts; and 
modulates, and divinely leads them. Is that a wonder, 
which happens in two hours; and does it cease to be 
wonderful if happening in two million? Not only was 
Thebes built by the music of an Orpheus; but without 
the music of some inspired Orpheus was no city ever 
built, no work that man glories in ever done. 

* Sweep away the Illusion of Time; glance, if thou 
have eyes, from the near moving-cause to its' far-distant 
Mover: The stroke that came transmitted through a 
whole galaxy of elastic balls, was it less a stroke than 
if the last ball only had been struck, and sent flying? 
O, could I (with the Time-annihilating Hat) transport 
thee direct from the Beginnings to the Endings, how 
were thy eyesight unsealed, and thy heart set flaming 



NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM 235 

in the Light-sea of celestial wonder ! Then sawest thou 
that this fair Universe, were it in the meanest prov- 
ince thereof, is in very deed the star-doomed City of 
God; that through every star, through every grass- 
blade, and most through every Living Soul, the glory of 
a present God still beams. But Nature, which is the 
Time-vesture of God, and reveals Him to the wise, 
hides Him from the foolish. 

' Again, could anything be more miraculous than an 
actual authentic Ghost? The English Johnson longed^ 
all his life, to see one; but could not, though he went to 
Cock Lane, and thence to the church-vaults, and tapped 
on coffins. Foolish Doctor! Did he never, with the 
mind's eye as well as with the body's, look round him 
into that full tide of human Life he so loved; did he 
never so much as look into Himself? The good Doctor 
was a Ghost, as actual and authentic as heart could 
wish; well-nigh a million of Ghosts were traveling the 
streets by his side. Once more I say, sweep away the 
illusion of Time; compress the threescore years into 
three minutes: what else was he, what else are we? Are 
we not Spirits, that are shaped into a body, into an 
Appearance; and that fade away again into air and 
Invisibility? This is no metaphor, it is a simple sci- 
entific fact; we start out of Nothingness, take figure,, 
and are Apparitions ; round us, as round the veriest spec- 
ter, is Eternity; and to Eternity minutes are as years 
and aeons. Come there not tones of Love and Faith, as 
from celestial harp-strings, like the Song of beatified 
Souls? And again, do not we squeak and jibber (in our 
discordant, screech-owlish debatings and recriminat- 
ings) ; and glide bodeful, and feeble, and fearful; or 
uproar (poltern), and revel in our mad Dance of the 
Dead, — till the scent of the morning air summons us to 
our still Home; and dreamy Night becomes awake and. 



236 SARTOR RESARTUS 

Day? Where now is Alexander of Macedon: does the 
steel Host, that yelled in fierce battle-shouts at Issus 
and Arbela, remain behind him; or have they all van- 
ished utterly, even as perturbed Goblins must? Na- 
poleon too, and his Moscow Retreats and Austerlitz 
Campaigns ! Was it all other than the veriest Specter- 
hunt; which has now, with its howling tumult that made 
Night hideous, flitted away ? — Ghosts ! There are nigh 
a thousand-million walking the Earth openly at noon- 
tide; some half-hundred have vanished from it, some 
half-hundred have arisen in it, ere thy watch ticks once. 

' O Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider 
that we not only carry each a future Ghost within Him ; 
but are, in very deed, Ghosts ! These Limbs, whence 
had we them; this stormy Force; this life-blood with 
its burning Passion? They are dust and shadow; a 
Shadow-system gathered round our Me; wherein, 
through some moments or years, the Divine Essence is 
to be revealed in the Flesh. That warrior on his strong 
war-horse, fire flashes through his eyes; force dwells in 
his arm and heart: but warrior and war-horse are a 
vision; a revealed Force, nothing more. Stately they 
tread the Earth, as if it were a firm substance: fool! 
the Earth is but a film; it cracks in twain, and warrior 
and war-horse sink beyond plummet's sounding. Plum- 
met's? Fantasy herself will not follow them. A little 
while ago, they were not; a little while, and they are 
not, their very ashes are not. 

' So it has been from the beginning, so will it be to 
the end. Generation after generation takes to itself the 
Form of a Body; and forth-issuing from Cimmerian 
Night, on Heaven's mission appears. What Force and 
Fire is in each he expends: one grinding in the mill of 
Industry; one hunter-like climbing the giddy Alpine 
heights of Science; one madly dashed in pieces on the 



CIRCUMSPECTIVE 237 

rocks of Strife, in war with his fellow: — and then the 
Heaven-sent is recalled; his earthly Vesture falls away, 
and soon even to sense becomes a vanished Shadow. 
Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of 
Heaven's Artillery, does this mysterious Mankind 
thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding 
grandeur, through the unknown Deep. Thus, like a 
God-created, fire-breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from 
the Inane; haste stormfully across the astonished Earth; 
then plunge again into the Inane. Earth's mountains 
are leveled, and her seas filled up, in our passage: can 
the Earth, which is but dead and a vision, resist Spirits 
which have reality and are alive? On the hardest ada- 
mant some footprint of us is stamped-in; the last Rear 
of the host will read traces of the earliest Van. But 
whence? — O Heaven, whither? Sense knows not; 
Faith knows not; only that it is through Mystery to 
Mystery, from God and to God. 



"We are such stuff 
As dreams are made of, and our little Life 
is rounded with a sleep!"* 



CHAPTER IX 

CIRCUMSPECTIVE 

Here, then, arises the so momentous question: Have 
many British Readers actually arrived with us at the 
new promised country ; is the Philosophy of Clothes now 
at last opening around them? Long and adventurous 
has the journey been: from those outmost vulgar, pal- 
pable Woolen Hulls of Man; through his wondrous 



238 SARTOR RESARTUS 

Flesh-Garment, and his wondrous Social Garnitures; 
inwards to the Garments of his very Soul's Soul, to 
Time and Space themselves ! And now does the spir- 
itual, eternal Essence of Man, and of Mankind, bared 
of such wrappages, begin in any measure to reveal it- 
self? Can many readers discern, as through a glass 
darkly, in huge wavering outlines, some primeval rudi- 
ments of Man's Being, what is changeable divided from 
what is unchangeable? Does that Earth-Spirit's speech 
in Faust, — 

* Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply, 
And weave for God the Garment thou see'st Him by*; 

or that other thousand-times repeated speech of the 
Magician, Shakespeare, — 

•And like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
The cloudcapt Towers, the gorgeous Palaces, 
The solemn Temples, the great Globe itself, 
And all which it inherit, shall dissolve; 
And like this unsubstantial pageant faded, 
Leave not a wrack behind'; 

begin to have some meaning for us? In a word, do we 
at length stand safe in the far region of Poetic Crea- 
tion and Palingenesia, where that Phoenix Death-Birth 
of Human Society, and of all Human Things, appears 
possible, is seen to be inevitable? 

Along this most insufficient, unheard-of-Bridge, which 
the Editor, by Heaven's blessing, has now seen himself 
enabled to conclude if not complete, it cannot be his 
sober calculation, but only his fond hope, that many 
have traveled without accident. No firm arch, over- 
spanning the Impassable with paved highway, could 
the Editor construct; only, as was said, some zigzag 
series of rafts floating tumultuously thereon. Alas, and 



CIRCUMSPECTIVE 239 

the leaps from raft to raft, were too often of a break- 
neck character; the darkness, the nature of the element, 
all was against us ! 

Nevertheless, may not here and there one of a thou- 
sand, provided with a discursiveness of intellect rare 
in our day, have cleared the passage, in spite of all? 
Happy few! little band of Friends! be welcome, be of 
courage. By degrees, the eye grows accustomed to its 
new Whereabout; the hand can stretch itself forth to 
work there: it is in this grand and indeed highest work 
of Palingenesia that ye shall labor, each according to 
ability. New laborers will arrive; new Bridges will be 
built; nay, may not our own poor rope-and-raft Bridge, 
in your passings and repassings, be mended in many a 
pont, till it grows quite firm, passable even for the halt? 

Meanwhile, of the innumerable multitude that started 
with us, joyous and full of hope, where now is the in- 
numerable remainder, whom we see no longer by our 
side? The most have recoiled, and stand gazing afar 
off, in unsympathetic astonishment, at our career: not 
a few, pressing forward with more courage, have missed 
footing, or leaped short; and now swim weltering in the 
Chaos-flood, some towards this shore, some towards that. 
To these also a helping hand should be held out; at 
least some word of encouragement be said. 

Or, to speak without metaphor, with which mode of 
utterance Teufelsdrockh unhappily has somewhat in- 
fected us, — can it be hidden from the Editor that many 
a British reader sits reading quite bewildered in head, 
and afflicted rather than instructed by the present 
Work? Yes, long ago has many a British Reader been, 
as now, demanding with something like a snarl: 
Whereto does all this lead; or what use is in it? 

In the way of replenishing thy purse, or otherwise 
aiding thy digestive faculty, O British Reader, it leads 



240 SARTOR RESARTUS 

to nothing, and there is no use in it; but rather the re- 
verse, for it costs thee somewhat. Nevertheless, if 
through this unpromising Horn-gate, Teufelsdrockh, and 
we by means of him, have led thee into the true Land 
of Dreams; and through the Clothes-Screen, as through 
a magical Pierre-Pertuis, thou lookest, even for mo- 
ments, into the region of the Wonderful, and seest and 
feelest that thy daily life is girt with Wonder, and 
based on Wonder, and thy very blankets and breeches 
are Miracles, — then art thou profited beyond money's 
worth; and hast a thankfulness towards our Professor; 
nay, perhaps in many a literary Tea-circle wilt open 
thy kind lips, and audibly express that same. 

Naj' further, art not thou too perhaps by this time 
made aware that all Symbols are properly Clothes; that 
all Forms whereby Spirit manifests itself to sense, 
whether outwardly or in the imagination, are Clothes; 
and thus not only the parchment Magna Charta, which 
a Tailor was nigh cutting into measures, but the Pomp 
and Authority of Law, the sacredness of Majesty, and 
all inferior Worships (Worthships) are properly a Ves- 
ture and Raiment; and the Thirty-nine Articles them- 
selves are articles of wearing-apparel (for the Religious 
Idea) ? In which case, must it not also be admitted 
that this Science of Clothes is a high one, and may with 
infinitely deeper study on thy part yield richer fruit: 
that it takes scientific rank beside Codification, and Po- 
litical Economy, and the Theory of the British Consti- 
tution; nay rather, from its prophetic height looks down 
on all these, as on so many weaving-shops and spinning- 
mills, where the Vestures which it has to fashion, and 
consecrate and distribute, are, too often by haggard hun- 
gry operatives who see no farther than their nose, me- 
chanically woven and spun ? 

But omitting all this^ much more all that concerns 



CIRCUMSPECTIVE 241 

Natural Supernaturalism, and indeed whatever has ref- 
erence to the Ulterior or Transcendental portion of the 
Science, or bears never so remotely on that promised 
Volume of the Palingenesie der menschlichen Gesell- 
schaft (Newbirth of Society), — we humbly suggest that 
no province of Clothes-Philosophy, even the lowest, is 
without its direct value, but that innumerable inferences 
of a practical nature may be drawn therefrom. To say 
nothing of those pregnant considerations, ethical, po- 
litical, symbolical, which crowd on the Clothes-Philoso- 
pher from the very threshold of his Science; nothing 
even of those ' architectural ideas/ which, as we have 
seen, lurk at the bottom of all Modes, and will one day, 
better unfolding themselves, lead to important revolu- 
tions,— let us glance for a moment, and with the faint- 
est light of Clothes-Philosophy, on what may be called 
the Habilatory Class of our fellow-men. Here too over- 
looking, where so much were to be looked on, the mil- 
lion spinners, weavers, fullers, dyers, washers, and 
wringers, that puddle and muddle in their dark recesses, 
to make us Clothes, and die that we may live, — let us 
but turn the reader's attention upon two small divisions 
of mankind, who, like moths, may be regarded as Cloth- 
animals, creatures that live, move, and have their being 
in Cloth: we mean, Dandies and Tailors. 

In regard to both which small divisions it may be as- 
serted without scruple, that the public feeling, unen- 
lightened by Philosophy, is at fault; and even that the 
dictates of humanity are violated. As will perhaps 
abundantly appear to readers of the two following Chap- 
ters. 



242 SARTOR RESARTUS 

CHAPTER X 

THE DANDIACAL BODY 

First, touching Dandies, let us consider, with some 
scientific strictness, what a Dandy specially is. A 
Dandy is a Clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, 
office, and existence consists in the wearing of Clothes. 
Every faculty of his soul, spirit, purse, and person is 
heroically consecrated to this one object, the wearing 
of Clothes wisely and well: so that as others dress to 
live, he lives to dress. . The all-importance of Clothes, 
which a German Professor, of unequaled learning and 
acumen, writes his enormous Volume to demonstrate, 
has sprung up in the intellect of the Dandy without ef- 
fort, like an instinct of genius ; he is inspired with Cloth, 
a Poet of Cloth. What Teufelsdrockh would call a 
' Divine Idea of Cloth ' is born with him ; and this, like 
other such Ideas, will express itself outwardly, or wring 
his heart asunder with unutterable throes. 

But, like a generous, creative enthusiast, he fear- 
lessly makes his Idea an Action; shows himself in pe- 
culiar guise to mankind; walks forth, a witness and liv- 
ing Martyr to the eternal world of Clothes. We called 
him a Poet: is not his body the (stuffed) parchment- 
skin whereon he writes, with cunning Huddersfield dyes, 
a Sonnet to his mistress' eyebrow? Say, rather, an 
Epos, and Clotha Virumque cano, to the whole world, 
in Macaronic verses, which he that runs may read. 
Nay, if you grant, what seems to be admissible, that the 
Dandy has a Thinking-principle in him, and some notions 
of Time and Space, is there not in this Life-devotedness 
to Cloth, in this so willing sacrifice of the Immortal to 
the Perishable, something (though in reverse order) of 



THE DANDIACAL BODY MS 

that blending and identification of Eternity with Time, 
which, as we have seen, constitutes the Prophetic char- 
acter ? 

And now, for all this perennial Martyrdom, and 
Poesy, and even Prophecy, what is it that the Dandy 
asks in return? Solely, we may say, that you would 
recognize his existence; would admit him to be a liv- 
ing object; or even failing this, a visual object, or thing 
that will reflect rays of light. Your silver or your 
gold (beyond what the niggardly Law has already se- 
cured him) he solicits not; simply, the glance of your 
eyes. Understand his mystic significance, or altogether 
miss and misinterpret it; do but look at him, and he is 
contented. May we not well cry shame on an ungrate- 
ful world, which refuses even this poor boon; which 
will waste its optic faculty on dried Crocodiles, and 
Siamese Twins; and over the domestic wonderful won- 
der of wonders, a live Dandy, glance with hasty indif- 
ference, and a scarcely concealed contempt ! Him no 
Zoologist classes among the Mammalia, no Anatomist 
dissects with care: when did we see any injected Prep- 
aration of the Dandy in our Museums; any specimen 
of him preserved in spirits? Lord Herringbone may 
dress himself in a snuff-brown suit, with snuff-brown 
shirt and shoes: it skills not; the undiscerning public, 
occupied with grosser wants, passes by regardless on 
the other side. 

The age of Curiosity, like that of Chivalry, is indeed, 
properly speaking, gone. Yet perhaps only gone to 
sleep: for here arises the Clothes-Philosophy to resusci- 
tate, strangely enough, both the one and the other! 
Should sound views of this Science come to prevail, 
the essential nature of the British Dandy, and the mys- 
tic significance that lies in him, cannot always remain 
hidden under laughable and lamentable hallucination. 



244 SARTOR RESARTUS 

The following long Extract from Professor Teufels- 
drockh may set the matter, if not in its true light, yet 
in the way towards such. It is to be regretted, how- 
ever, that here, as so often elsewhere, the Professor's 
keen philosophic perspicacity is somewhat marred by a 
certain mixture of almost owlish purblindness, or else 
of some perverse, ineffectual, ironic tendency; our read- 
ers shall judge which: 

' In these distracted times/ writes he, f when the Re- 
ligious Principle, driven out of most Churches, either 
lies unseen in the hearts of good men, looking and long- 
ing and silently working there towards some new Reve- 
lation; or else wanders homeless over the world, like 
a disembodied soul seeking its terrestrial organization, 
— into how many strange shapes, of Superstition and 
Fanaticism, does it not tentatively and errantly cast 
itself! The higher Enthusiasm of man's nature is for 
the while without Exponent; yet does it continue inde- 
structible, unweariedly active, and work blindly in the 
great chaotic deep: thus Sect after Sect, and Church 
after Church, bodies itself forth, and melts again into 
new metamorphosis. 

' Chiefly is this observable in England, which, as the 
wealthiest and worst-instructed of European nations, 
offers precisely the elements (of Heat, namely, and of 
Darkness), in which such moon-calves and monstrosities 
are best generated. Among the newer Sects of that 
country, one of the most notable, and closely connected 
with our present subject, is that of the Dandies; con- 
cerning which, what little information I have been able 
to procure may fitly stand here. 

* It is true, certain of the English Journalists, men 
generally without sense for the Religious Principle, or 
judgment for its manifestations, speak, in their brief 



THE DANDIACAL BODY 245 

enigmatic notices, as if this were perhaps rather a Secu- 
lar Sect, and not a Religious one; nevertheless, to the 
psychologic eye its devotional and even sacrificial char- 
acter plainly enough reveals itself. Whether it belongs 
to the class of Fetich-worships, or of Hero-worships or 
Polytheisms, or to what other class, may in the present 
state of our intelligence remain undecided (schweberi). 
A certain touch of Manicheism, not indeed in the Gnostic 
shape, is discernible enough: also (for human Error 
walks in a cycle, and reappears at intervals) a not- 
inconsiderable resemblance to that Superstition of the 
Athos Monks, who by fasting from all nourishment, and 
looking intensely for a length of time into their own 
navels, came to discern therein the true Apocalypse 
of Nature, and Heaven Unveiled. To my own surmise, 
it appears as if this Dandiacal Sect were but a new 
modification, adapte d to th e new time, of that primeval 
Super; sti tion^ Self-w orship ; which Zerdusht, Quang- 
foutchee, Mohammed, and others, strove rather to subor- 
dinate and restrain than to eradicate, and which only 
in the purer forms of Religion has been altogether re- 
jected. Wherefore, if any one chooses to name it re- 
vived Ahrimanism, or a new figure of Demon-worship, I 
have, so far as is yet visible, no objection. 

' For the rest, these people, animated with the zeal of 
a new Sect, display courage and perseverance, and what 
force there is in man's nature, though never so enslaved. 
They affect great purity and separatism; distinguish 
themselves by a particular costume (whereof some no- 
tices were given in the earlier part of this Volume) ; 
likewise, so far as possible, by a particular speech (ap- 
parently some broken Lingua-franca, or English- 
French) ; and, on the whole, strive to maintain a true 
Nazarene deportment, and keep themselves unspotted 
from the world. 



246 SARTOR RESARTUS 

' They have their Temples, whereof the chief, as the 
Jewish Temple did, stands in their metropolis; and is 
named Almcuck's, a word of uncertain etymology. They 
worship principally by night; and have their High- 
priests and Highpriestesses, who, however, do not con- 
tinue for life. The rites, by some supposed to be of 
the Menadic sort, or perhaps with an Eleusinian or 
Cabiric character, are held strictly secret. Nor are 
Sacred Books wanting to the Sect; these they call Fash- 
ionable Novels: however, the Canon is not completed, 
and some are canonical and others not. 

' Of such Sacred Books I, not without expense, pro- 
cured myself some samples; and in hope of true in- 
sight, and with the zeal which beseems an Inquirer into 
Clothes, set to interpret and study them. But wholly 
to no purpose: that tough faculty of reading, for which 
the world will not refuse me credit, was here for the 
first time foiled and set at naught. In vain that I sum- 
moned my whole energies (mich weidlich anstrengte), 
and did my very utmost; at the end of some short space, 
I was uniformly seized with not so much what I can 
call a drumming in my ears, as a kind of infinite, un- 
sufferable, Jew's harping and scrannel-piping there; to 
which the frightfullest species of Magnetic Sleep soon 
supervened. And if I strove to shake this away, and 
absolutely would not yield, there came a hitherto un- 
felt sensation, as of Delirium Tremens, and a melting 
into total deliquium: till at last, by order of the Doctor, 
dreading ruin to my whole intellectual and bodily fac- 
ulties, and a general breaking-up of the constitution, I 
reluctantly but determinedly forbore. rVas there some 
miracle at work here ; like those Fire-balls, and supernal 
and infernal prodigies, which, in the case of the Jewish 
Mysteries, have also more than once scared-back the 
Alien? Be this as it may, such failure on my part, 



THE DANDIACAL BODY 247 

after best efforts, must excuse the imperfection of this 
sketch; altogether incomplete, yet the completest I could 
give of a Sect too singular to be omitted. 

' Loving my own life and senses as I do, no power 
shall induce me, as a private individual, to open another 
Fashionable Novel. But luckily, in this dilemma, comes 
a hand from the clouds ; whereby if not victory, deliver- 
ance is held out to me. Round one of those Book-pack- 
ages, which the S tills chweig en' sche Buchhandlung is in 
the habit of importing from England, come, as is usual, 
various waste printed-sheets (Maculatur-blatter) , by 
way of interior wrappage: into these the Clothes-Phi- 
losopher, with a certain Mohammedan reverence even for 
waste-paper, where curious knowledge will sometimes 
hover disdains not to cast his eye. Readers may judge 
of his astonishment when on such a defaced stray-sheet, 
probably the outcast fraction of some English Period- 
ical, such as they name Magazine, appears something 
like a Dissertation on this very subject of Fashionable 
Novels! It sets out, indeed^ chiefly from a Secular 
point of view; directing itself, not without asperity, 
against some to me unknown individual named Pelham, 
who seems to be a Mystagogue, and leading Teacher and 
Preacher of the Sect; so that, what indeed otherwise 
was not to be expected in such a fugitive fragmentary 
sheet, the true secret, the Religious physiognomy and 
physiology of the Dandiacal Body, is nowise laid fully 
open there. Nevertheless, scattered lights do from time 
to time sparkle out, whereby I have endeavored to profit. 
Nay, in one passage selected from the Prophecies, or 
Mythic Theogonies, or whatever they are (for the style 
seems very mixed) of this Mystagogue, I find what ap- 
pears to be a Confession of Faith, or Whole Duty of 
Man, according to the tenets of that Sect. Which Con- 
fession or Whole Duty, therefore, as proceeding from 



248 SARTOR RESARTUS 

a source so authentic, I shall here arrange under Seven 
distinct Articles, and in very abridged shape lay before 
the German world; therewith taking leave of this mat- 
ter. Observe also, that to avoid possibility of error, I, 
as may be, quote literally from the Original: 

' ARTICLES OF FAITH 

" 1. Coats should have nothing of the triangle about 
them; at the same time, wrinkles behind should be care- 
fully avoided. 

"2. The collar is a very important point: it should 
be low behind, and slightly rolled. 

" 3. No licence of fashion can allow a man of deli- 
cate taste to adopt the posterial luxuriance of a Hot- 
tentot. 

" 4. There is safety in a swallow-tail. 

" 5. The good sense of a gentleman is nowhere more 
finely developed than in his rings. 

"6. It is permitted to mankind, under certain restric- 
tions, to wear white waistcoats. 

" 7. The trousers must be exceedingly tight across 
the hips." 

' All which Propositions I, for the present, content 
myself with modestly but peremptorily and irrevocably 
denying. 

' In strange contrast with this Dandiacal Body stands 
another British Sect, originally, as I understand, of 
Ireland, where its chief seat still is; but known also in 
the main Island, and indeed everywhere rapidly spread- 
ing. As this Sect has hitherto emitted no Canonical 
Books, it remains to me in the same state of obscurity as 
the Dandiacal, which has published Books that the un- 
assisted human faculties are inadequate to read. The 
members appear to be designated by a considerable di- 






THE DANDIACAL BODY 249 

versity of names, according to their various places of 
establishment: in England they are generally called the 
Drudge Sect; also, unphilosophically enough, the White 
Negroes; and, chiefly in scorn by those of other com- 
munions, the Ragged-Beggar Sect. In Scotland, again, 
I find them entitled Hallanshakers, or the Stooh of Duds 
Sect; any individual communicant is named Stooh of 
Duds (that is, Shock of Rags), in allusion, doubtless, to 
their professional Costume. While in Ireland, which, 
as mentioned, is their grand parent hive, they go by a 
perplexing multiplicity of designations, such as Bog- 
trotters, Redshanks, Ribbonmen, Cottiers, Peep-of-Day 
Boys, Babes of the Wood, Rockites, Poor-Slaves : which 
last, however, seems to be the primary and generic 
name; whereto, probably enough, the others are only 
subsidiary species, or slight varieties ; or, at most, propa- 
gated offsets from the parent stem, whose minute sub- 
divisions, and shades of difference, it were here loss of 
time to dwell on. Enough for us to understand, what 
seems indubitable, that the original Sect is that of the 
Poor-Slaves; whose doctrines, practises, and fundamen- 
tal characteristics pervade and animate the whole Body, 
howsoever denominated or outwardly diversified. 

'The precise speculative tenets of this Brotherhood: 
how the Universe, and Man, and Man's Life, picture 
themselves to the mind of an Irish Poor-Slave; with 
what feelings and opinions he looks forward on the Fu- 
ture, round on the Present, back on the Past, it were 
extremely difficult to specify. Something Monastic 
there appears to be in their Constitution: we find them 
bound by the two Monastic Vows, of Poverty and Obedi- 
ence; which Vows, especially the former, it is said, they 
observe with great strictness; nay, as I have understood 
it, they are pledged, and be it by any solemn Nazarene 
ordination or not, irrevocably consecrated thereto, even 



250 SARTOR RESARTUS 

before birth. That the third Monastic Vow, of Chas- 
tity, is rigidly enforced among them, I find no ground 
to conjecture. 

' Furthermore, they appear to imitate the Dandiacal 
Sect in their grand principle of wearing a peculiar 
Costume. Of which Irish Poor-Slave Costume no de- 
scription will indeed be found in the present Volume; 
for this reason, that by the imperfect organ of Lan- 
guage it did not seem describable. Their raiment con- 
sists of innumerable skirts, lappets and irregular wings, 
of all cloths and of all colors; through the labyrinthic 
intricacies of which their bodies are introduced by some 
unknown process. It is fastened together by a multi- 
plex combination of buttons, thrums, and skewers; to 
which frequently is added a girdle of leather, of hempen 
or even of straw rope, round the loins. To straw rope, 
indeed, they seem partial, and often wear it by way of 
sandals. In head-dress they aifect a certain freedom: 
hats with partial brim, without crown, or with only a 
loose, hinged, or valved crown; in the former case, they 
sometimes invert the hat, and wear it brim uppermost, 
like a University-cap, with what view is unknown. 

' The name Poor-Slaves seems to indicate a Slavonic, 
Polish, or Russian origins not so, however, the interior 
essence and spirit of their Superstition, which rather 
displays a Teutonic or Druidical character. One might 
fancy them worshipers of Hertha, or the Earth: for 
they dig and affectionately work continually in her 
bosom; or else, shut-up in private Oratories, meditate 
and manipulate the substances derived from her; sel- 
dom looking-up towards the Heavenly Luminaries, and 
then with comparative indifference. Like the Druids, 
on the other hand, they live in dark dwellings; often 
even breaking their glass-windows, where they find such, 
and stuffing them up with pieces of raiment, or other 



THE DANDIACAL BODY 251 

opaque substances, till the fit obscurity is restored. 
Again, like all followers of Nature-Worship, they are 
liable to outbreakings of an enthusiasm rising to feroc- 
ity; and burn men, if not in wicker idols, yet in sod 
cottages. 

' In respect of diet, they have also their observances. 
All Poor-Slaves are Rhizophagous (or Root-eaters) ; a 
few are Ichthyophagous, and use Salted Herrings : other 
animal food they abstain from; except indeed, with per- 
haps some strange inverted fragment of a Brahminical 
feeling, such animals as die a natural death. Their 
universal sustenance is the root named Potato, cooked 
by fire alone; and generally without condiment or relish 
of any kind, save an unknown condiment named Point, 
into the meaning of which I have vainly inquired; the 
victual Potatoes-and-Point not appearing, at least not 
with specific accuracy of description, in any European 
Cookery-Book whatever. For drink, they use, with an 
almost epigrammatic counterpoise of taste, Milk, which 
is the mildest of liquors, and Potheen, which is the 
fiercest. This latter I have tasted, as well as the Eng- 
lish Blue-Ruin, and the Scotch Whisky, analogous fluids 
used by the Sect in those countries: it evidently con- 
tains some form of alcohol, in the highest state of con- 
centration, though disguised with acrid oils; and is, on 
the whole, the most pungent substance known to me, 
— indeed, a perfect liquid fire. In all their Religious 
Solemnities, Potheen is said to be an indispensable 
requisite, and largely consumed. 

' An Irish Traveler, of perhaps common veracity, who 
presents himself under the to me unmeaning title of 
The late John Bernard, offers the following sketch of a 
domestic establishment, the inmates whereof, though 
such is not stated expressly, appear to have been of that 
Faith. Thereby shall my German readers now behold 



252 SARTOR RESARTUS 

an Irish Poor-Slave, as it were with their own eyes ; and 
even see him at meat. Moreover, in the so precious 
waste-paper sheet above mentioned, I have found some 
corresponding picture of a Dandiacal Household, 
painted by that same Dandiacal Mystagogue, or The- 
ogonist: this also, by way of counterpart and contrast, 
the world shall look into. 

' First, therefore, of the Poor-Slave, who appears like- 
wise to have been a species of Innkeeper. I quote from 
the original: 

Poor-Slave Household 

* " The furniture of this Caravansera consisted of a 
large iron Pot, two oaken Tables, two Benches, two 
Chairs, and a Potheen Noggin. There was a Loft above 
(attainable by a ladder), upon which the inmates slept; 
and the space below was divided by a hurdle into two 
Apartments ; the one for their cow and pig, the other for 
themselves and guests. On entering the house we dis- 
covered the family, eleven in number, at dinner: the 
father sitting at the top, the mother at the bottom, the 
children on each side, of a large oaken Board, which 
was scooped-out in the middle, like a trough, to receive 
the contents of their Pot of Potatoes. Little holes were 
cut at equal distances to contain Salt; and a bowl of 
Milk stood on the table: all the luxuries of meat and 
beer, bread, knives and dishes were dispensed with." 
The Poor-Slave himself our Traveler found, as he says, 
broad-backed, black-browed, of great personal strength, 
and mouth from ear to ear. His Wife was a sun- 
browned but well- featured woman; and his young ones, 
bare and chubby, had the appetite of ravens. Of their 
Philosophical or Religious tenets or observances, np no- 
tice or hint. 



THE DANDIACAL BODY 253 

' But now, secondly, of the Dandiacal Household ; in 
which, truly, that often-mentioned Mystagogue and in- 
spired Penman himself has his abode: 

Dandiacal Household 

'"A Dressing-room splendidly furnished; violet-col- 
ored curtains, chairs and ottomans of the same hue. 
Two full-length Mirrors are placed, one on each side 
of a table, which supports the luxuries of the Toilet. 
Several Bottles of Perfumes, arranged in a peculiar 
fashion, stand upon a smaller table of mother-of-pearl: 
opposite to these are placed the appurtenances of Lava- 
tion richly wrought in frosted silver. A Wardrobe of 
Buhl is on the left; the doors of which, being partly 
open, discover a profusion of Clothes; Shoes of a sin- 
gularly small size monopolize the lower shelves. Front- 
ing the wardrobe a door ajar gives some slight glimpse 
of a Bathroom. Folding-doors in the background. — 
Enter the Author," our Theogonist in person, " obsequi- 
ously preceded by a French Valet, in white silk Jacket 
and cambric Apron." 

' Such are the two Sects which, at this moment, di- 
vide the more unsettled portion of the British People; 
and agitate that ever-vexed country. To the eye of 
the political Seer, their mutual relation, pregnant with 
the elements of discord and hostility, is far from con- 
soling. These two principles of Dandiacal Self-wor- 
ship or Demon- worship, and Poor-Slavish or Drudgical 
Earth-worship, or whatever that same Drudgism may 
be, do as yet indeed manifest themselves under distant 
and nowise considerable shapes: nevertheless, in their 
roots and subterranean ramifications, they extend 
through the entire structure of Society, and work un- 



254 SARTOR RESARTUS 

weariedly in the secret depths of English national Ex- 
istence; striving to separate and isolate it into two con- 
tradictory, uncommunicating masses. 

' In numbers, and even individual strength, the Poor- 
Slaves or Drudges, it would seem, are hourly increas- 
ing. The Dandiacal, again, is by nature no proselytiz- 
ing Sect; but it boasts of great hereditary resources, 
and is strong by union; whereas the Drudges, split into 
parties, have as yet no rallying-point ; or at best only 
cooperate by means of partial secret affiliations. If, in- 
deed, there were to arise a Communion of Drudges, as 
there is already a Communion of Saints, what strangest 
effects would follow therefrom! Dandyism as yet af- 
fects to look down on Drudgism: but perhaps the hour 
of trial, when it will be practically seen which ought to 
look down, and which up, is not so distant. 

' J° me ii; seems probable that the two Sects will one 
day part England between them; each recruiting itself 
from the intermediate ranks, till there be none left to 
enlist on either side. Those Dandiacal Manicheans, 
with the host of Dandyizing Christians, will form one 
body: the Drudges, gathering round them whosoever is 
Drudgical, be he Christian or Infidel Pagan; sweeping- 
up likewise all manner of Utilitarians, Radicals, refrac- 
tory Potwallopers, and so forth, into their general mass, 
will form another. I could liken Dandyism and Drudg- 
ism to two bottomless boiling Whirlpools that had 
broken-out on opposite quarters of the firm land: as yet 
they appear only disquieted, foolishly bubbling wells, 
which man's art might cover-in; yet mark them, their 
diameter is daily widening: they are hollow Cones that 
boil-up from the infinite Deep, over which your firm 
land is but a thin crust or rind ! Thus daily is the in- 
termediate land crumbling-in, daily the empire of the 
two Buchan-Bullers extending; till now there is but a 



THE DANDIACAL BODY 255 

foot-plank, a mere film of Land between them; this too 
is washed away: and then — we have the true Hell of 
Waters, and Noah's Deluge is outdeluged! 

' Or better, I might call them two boundless, and 
indeed unexampled Electric Machines (turned by the 
"Machinery of Society"), with batteries of opposite 
quality; Drudgism the Negative, Dandyism the Posi- 
tive: one attracts hourly towards it and appropriates all 
the Positive Electricity of the nation (namely, the 
Money thereof) ; the other is equally busy with the 
Negative (that is to say the Hunger), which is equally 
potent. Hitherto you see only partial transient sparkles 
and sputters: but wait a little, till the entire nation is 
in an electric state; till your whole vital Electricity, no 
longer healthfully Neutral, is cut into two isolated por- 
tions of Positive and Negative (of Money and of Hun- 
ger) ; and stands there bottled-up in two World-Bat- 
teries ! The stirring of a child's finger brings the two 
together; and then — What then? The Earth is but 
shivered into impalpable smoke by that Doom's-thunder- 
peal; the Sun misses one of his Planets in Space, and 
thenceforth there are no eclipses of the Moon. — Or 
better still, I might liken ' 

O, enough, enough of likenings and similitudes; in 
excess of which, truly, it is hard to say whether Teufels- 
drockh or ourselves sin the more. 

We have often blamed him for a habit of wire-draw- 
ing and over-refining; from of old we have been familiar 
with his tendency to Mysticism and Religiosity, whereby 
in everything he was still scenting-out Religion: but 
never perhaps did these amaurosis-suffusions so cloud 
and distort his otherwise most piercing vision, as in this 
of the Dandiacal Body ! Or was there something of 
intended satire; is the Professor and Seer not quite 
the blinkard he affects to be? Of an ordinary mortal 



256 SARTOR RESARTUS 

we should have decisively answered in the affirmative; 
but with a Teufelsdrbckh there ever hovers some shade 
of doubt. In the meanwhile, if satire were actually in- 
tended, the case is little better. There are not wanting 
men who will answer: Does your Professor take us for 
simpletons? His irony has overshot itself; we see 
through it, and perhaps through him. 



CHAPTER XI 

TAILORS 

Thus, however, has our first Practical Inference from 
the Clothes-Philosophy, that which respects Dandies, 
been sufficiently drawn; and we come now to the second, 
concerning Tailors. On this latter our opinion happily 
quite coincides with that of Teufelsdrockh himself, as 
expressed in the concluding page of his Volume, to 
whom, therefore, we willingly give place. Let him 
speak his own last words, in his own way: 

' Upwards of a century/ says he, ' must elapse, and 
still the bleeding fight of Freedom be fought, whoso is 
noblest perishing in the van, and thrones be hurled on 
altars like Pelion on Ossa, and the Moloch of Iniquity 
have his victims, and the Michael of Justice his mar- 
tyrs, before Tailors can be admitted to their true pre- 
rogatives of manhood, and this last wound of suffering 
Humanity be closed. 

' If aught in the history of the world's blindness 
could surprise us, here might we indeed pause and won- 
der. An idea has gone abroad, and fixed itself down 
into a wide-spreading rooted error, that Tailors are a 



TAILORS 257 

distinct species in Physiology, not Men, but fractional 
Parts of a Man. Call any one a Schneider (Cutter, 
Tailor), is it not, in our dislocated, hoodwinked, and 
indeed delirious condition of Society, equivalent to defy- 
ing his perpetual fellest enmity? The epithet schnei- 
dermdssig (tailor-like) betokens an otherwise unap- 
proachable degree of pusillanimity: we introduce a 
Tailor's-Melancholy, more opprobrious than any Lep- 
rosy, into our Books of Medicine; and fable I know 
not what of his generating it by living on Cabbage. 
Why should I speak of Hans Sachs (himself a Shoe- 
maker, or kind of Leather-Tailor), with his Schneider 
mit dem Panier? Why of Shakspeare, in his Taming 
of the Shrew, and elsewhere ? Does it not stand on rec- 
ord that the English Queen Elizabeth, receiving a depu- 
tation of Eighteen Tailors, addressed them with a 
" Good-morning, gentlemen both ! " Did not the same 
virago boast that she had a Cavalry Regiment, whereof 
neither horse nor man could be injured; her Regiment, 
namely, of Tailors on Mares? Thus everywhere is the 
falsehood taken for granted, and acted on as an in- 
disputable fact. 

' Nevertheless, need I put the question to any Physi- 
ologist, whether it is disputable or not? Seems it not 
at least presumable, that, under his Clothes, the Tailor 
has bones and viscera, and other muscles than the sar- 
torious? Which function of manhood is the Tailor not 
conjectured to perform? Can he not arrest for debt? 
Is he not in most countries a tax-paying animal? 

' To no reader of this Volume can it be doubtful 
which conviction is mine. Nay if the fruit of these 
long vigils, and almost preternatural Inquiries, is not 
to perish utterly, the world will have approximated 
towards a higher Truth; and the doctrine, which Swift, 
with the keen forecast of genius, dimly anticipated, will 



258 SARTOR RESARTUS 

stand revealed in clear light: that the Tailor is not only 
a Man, but something of a Creator or Divinity. Of 
Franklin it was said, that "he snatched the Thunder 
from Heaven and the Scepter from Kings ": but which 
is greater, I would ask, he that lends, or he that 
snatches? For, looking away from individual cases, and 
how a Man is by the Tailor new-created into a Noble- 
man, and clothed not only with Wool but with Dignity 
and a Mystic Dominion,— is not the fair fabric of So- r 
ciety itself, with all its royal mantles and pontifical 
stoles, whereby, from nakedness and dismemberment, 
we are organized into Polities, into nations, and a whole 
cooperating Mankind, the creation, as has here been 
often irrefragably evinced, of the Tailor alone?— What 
too are all Poets and moral Teachers, but a species of 
Metaphorical Tailors? Touching which high Guild the 
greatest living Guild-brother has triumphantly asked 
us: "Nay if thou wilt have it, who but the Poet first 
made Gods for men; brought them down to us; and 
raised us up to them ? " 

' And this is he, whom sitting downcast, on the hard 
basis of his Shopboard, the world treats with contumely, 
as the ninth part of a man! Look up, thou much-in- 
jured one, look up with the kindling eye of hope, and 
prophetic bodings of a noble better time. Too long 
hast thou sat there, on crossed legs, wearing thy ankle- 
joints to horn; like some sacred Anchorite, or Catholic 
Fakir, doing penance, drawing down Heaven's richest 
blessings, for a world that scoffed at thee. Be of hope! 
Already streaks of blue peer through our clouds; the 
thick gloom of Ignorance is rolling asunder, and it will 
be Day. Mankind will repay with interest their long- 
accumulated debt: the Anchorite that was scoffed at will 
be worshiped; the Fraction will become not an Integer 
only, but a Square and Cube. With astonishment the 



TAILORS 259 

world will recognize that the Tailor is its Hierophant 
and Hierarchy or even its God. 

* As I stood in the Mosque of St. Sophia, and looked 
upon these Four-and-Twenty Tailors, sewing and em- 
broidering that rich Cloth, which the Sultan sends yearly 
for the Caaba of Mecca, I thought within myself: How 
many other Unholies has your covering Art made holy, 
besides this Arabian Whinstone! 

' Still more touching was it when, turning the corner 
of a lane, in the Scottish Town of Edinburgh, I came 
upon a Signpost, whereon stood written that such and 
such a one was "Breeches-Maker to his Majesty"; 
and stood painted the Effigies of a Pair of Leather 
Breeches, and between the knees these memorable words, 
Sic itur ad astra. Was not this the martyr prison- 
speech of a Tailor sighing indeed in bonds, yet sighing 
towards deliverance, and prophetically appealing to a 
better day? A day of justice, when the worth of 
Breeches would be revealed to man, and the Scissors be- 
come forever venerable. 

' Neither, perhaps, may I now say, has his appeal 
been altogether in vain. It was in this high moment, 
when the soul, rent, as it were, and shed asunder, is 
open to inspiring influence, that I first conceived this 
Work on Clothes: the greatest I can ever hope to do; 
which has already, after long retardations, occupied, and 
will yet occupy, so large a section of my Life; and of 
which the Primary and simpler Portion may here find 
its conclusion.' 



260 SARTOR RESARTUS 

CHAPTER XII 




FAREWELL 



So have we endeavored, from the enormous, amor- 
phous Plum-pudding, more like a Scottish Haggis, 
which Herr Teufelsdrockh had kneaded for his fellow- 
mortals, to pick out the choicest Plums, and present 
them separately on a cover of our own. A laborious, 
perhaps a thankless enterprise; in which, however, 
something of hope has occasionally cheered us, and of 
which we can now wash our hands not altogether without 
satisfaction. If hereby, though in barbaric wise, some 
morsel of spiritual nourishment have been added to the 
scanty ration of our beloved British world, what nobler 
recompense could the Editor desire? If it prove other- 
wise, why should he murmur? Was not this a Task 
which Destiny, in any case, had appointed him; which 
having now done with, he sees his general Day's-work 
so much the lighter, so much the shorter? 

Of Professor Teufelsdrockh it seems impossible to 
take leave without a mingled feeling of astonishment, 
gratitude, and disapproval. Who will not regret that 
talents, which might have profited in the higher walks 
of Philosophy, or in Art itself, have been so much de- 
voted to a rummaging among lumber-rooms; nay too 
often to a scraping in kennels, where lost rings and dia- 
mond-necklaces are nowise the sole conquests? Regret 
is unavoidable; yet censure were loss of time. To cure 
him of his mad humors British Criticism would essay 
in vain: enough for her if she can, by vigilance, pre- 
vent the spreading of such among ourselves. What a 
result, should this piebald, entangled, hyper-meta- 
phorical style of writing, not to say of thinking, become 



FAREWELL 261 

general among our Literary men ! As it might so easily 
cb. Thus has not the Editor himself, working over 
Teufelsdrockh's German, lost much of his own English 
purity? Even as the smaller whirlpool is sucked into 
the larger, and made to whirl along with it, so has the 
lesser mind, in this instance, been forced to become por- 
tion of the greater, and, like it, see all things figura- 
tively: which habit time and assiduous effort will be 
needed to eradicate. 

Nevertheless, wayward as our Professor shows him- 
self, is there any reader that can part with him in de- 
clared enmity? Let us confess, there is that in the 
wild, much-suffering, much-inflicting man, which almost 
attaches us. His attitude, we will hope and believe, is 
that of a man who had said to Cant, Begone; and to 
Dilettantism, Here thou canst not be; and to Truth, Be 
thou in place of all to me: a man who had manfully de- 
fied the ' Time-prince/ or Devil, to his face ; nay per- 
haps, Hannibal-like, was mysteriously consecrated from 
birth to that warfare, and now stood minded to wage the 
same, by all weapons, in all places, at all times. In 
such a cause, any soldier, were he but a Polack Scythe- 
man, shall be welcome. 

Still the question returns on us: How could a man 
occasionally of keen insight, not without keen sense of 
propriety, who had real Thoughts to communicate, re- 
solve to emit them in a shape bordering so closely on 
the absurd? Which question he were wiser than the 
present Editor who should satisfactorily answer. Our 
conjecture has sometimes been, that perhaps Necessity 
as well as Choice was concerned in it. Seems it not 
conceivable that, in a Life like our Professor's, where 
so much bountifully given by Nature had in Practise 
failed and misgone, Literature also would never rightly 
prosper: that striving with his characteristic vehemence 



262 SARTOR RESARTUS 

to paint this and the other Picture, and ever without 
success, he at last desperately dashes his sponge, full of 
all colors, against the canvas, to try whether it will 
paint Foam? With all his stillness, there were per- 
haps in Teufelsdrockh desperation enough for this. 

A second conjecture we hazard with even less war- 
ranty. It is, that Teufelsdrockh is not without some 
touch of the universal feeling, a wish to proselytize. 
How often already have we paused, uncertain whether 
the basis of this so enigmatic nature were really Sto- 
icism and Despair, or Love and Hope only seared into 
the figure of these ! Remarkable, moreover, is this say- 
ing of his: 'How were Friendship possible? In mu- 
tual devotedness to the Good and True: otherwise im- 
possible; except as Armed Neutrality, or hollow Com- 
mercial League. A man, be the Heavens ever praised, 
is sufficient for himself; yet were ten men, united in 
Love, capable of being and of doing what ten thousand 
singly would fail in. Infinite is the help man can yield 
to man.' And now in conjunction therewith consider 
this other: * It is the Night of the World, and still long 
till it be Day: we wander amid the glimmer of smoking 
ruins, and the Sun and the Stars of Heaven are as if 
blotted out for a season; and two immeasurable Phan- 
toms, Hypocrisy and Atheism, with the Gowl, Sen- 
suality, stalk abroad over the Earth, and call it theirs: 
well at ease are the Sleepers for whom Existence is a 
shallow Dream/ 

But what of the awestruck Wakeful who find it a 
Reality? Should not these unite; since even an authen- 
tic Specter is not visible to Two?— In which case were 
this enormous Clothes-Volume properly an enormous 
Pitchpan, which our Teufelsdrockh in his lone watch- 
tower had kindled, that it might flame far and wide 
through the Night, and many a disconsolately wander- 



FAREWELL 263 

ing spirit be guided thither to a Brother's bosom! — We 
say as before, with all his malign Indifference, who 
knows what mad Hopes this man may harbor? 

Meanwhile there is one fact to be stated here, which 
harmonizes ill with such conjecture; and, indeed, were 
Teufelsdrockh made like other men, might as good as 
altogether subvert it. Namely, that while the Beacon- 
fire blazed its brightest, the Watchman had quitted it; 
that no pilgrim could now ask him: Watchman, what 
of the Night? Professor Teufelsdrockh, be it known, 
is no longer visibly present at Weissnichtwo, but again 
to all appearance lost in space! Some time ago, the 
Hofrath Heuschrecke was pleased to favor us with an- 
other copious Epistle; wherein much is said about the 
' Population-Institute ' ; much repeated in praise of the 
Paper-bag Documents, the hieroglyphic nature of which 
our Hofrath still seems not to have surmised; and, 
lastly, the strangest occurrence communicated, to us for 
the first time, in the following paragraph: 

f Ew. Wohlgeboren will have seen from the public 
Prints, with what affectionate and hitherto fruitless 
solicitude Weissnichtwo regards the disappearance of 
her Sage. Might but the united voice of Germany pre- 
vail on him to return; nay could we but so much as 
elucidate for ourselves by what mystery he went away! 
But, alas, old Lieschen experiences or affects the pro- 
foundest deafness, the profoundest ignorance: in the 
Wahngasse all lies swept, silent, sealed up; the Privy 
Council itself can hitherto elicit no answer. 

* It had been remarked that while the agitating news 
of those Parisian Three Days flew from mouth to mouth, 
and dinned every ear in Weissnichtwo, Herr Teufels- 
drockh was not known, at the Gans or elsewhere, to have 
Spoken, for a whole week, any syllable except once these 
three: Es geht an (It is beginning). Shortly after, as 



264 SARTOR RESARTUS 

Ew. Wohlgeboren knows, was the public tranquillity 
here, as in Berlin, threatened by a Sedition of the Tail- 
ors. Nor did there want Evil-wishers, or perhaps mere 
desperate Alarmists, who asserted that the closing Chap- 
ter of the Clothes-Volume was to blame. In this ap- 
palling crisis, the serenity of our Philosopher was inde- 
scribable: nay, perhaps through one humble individual, 
something thereof might pass into the Rath (Council) 
itself, and so contribute to the country's deliverance. 
The Tailors are now entirely pacificated. — 

' To neither of these two incidents can I attribute 
our loss ; yet still comes there the shadow of a suspicion 
out of Paris and its Politics. For example, when the 
Saint-Sifnonian Society transmitted its Propositions 
hither, and the whole Gans was one vast cackle of laugh- 
ter, lamentation, and astonishment, our Sage sat mute; 
and at the end of the third evening said merely : " Here 
also are men who have discovered, not without amaze- 
ment, that Man is still Man; of which high, long-for- 
gotten Truth you already see them make a false ap- 
plication." Since then, as has been ascertained by ex- 
amination of the Post-Director, there passed at least 
one Letter with its Answer between the Messieurs 
Bazard-Enfantin and our Professor himself; of what 
tenor can now only be conjectured. On the fifth night 
following, he was seen for the last time! 

' Has this invaluable man, so obnoxious to most of the 
hostile Sects that convulse our Era, been spirited away 
by certain of their emissaries; or did he go forth volun- 
tarily to their head-quarters to confer with them and 
confront them? Reason we have, at least of a negative 
sort, to believe the Lost still living; our widowed heart 
also whispers that ere long he will himself give a sign. 
Otherwise, indeed, his archives must, one day, be opened 



FAREWELL 265 

by Authority; where much, perhaps the Palingenesie 
itself, is thought to be reposited.' 

Thus far the Hofrath; who vanishes, as is his wont, 
too like an Ignis Fatuus, leaving the dark still darker. 

So that Teufebdrockh's public History were not done, 
then, or reduced to an even, unromantic tenor: nay, 
perhaps the better part thereof were only beginning? 
We stand in a region of conjectures, where substance 
has melted into shadow, and one cannot be distinguished 
from the other. May Time, which solves or suppresses 
all problems, throw glad light on this also ! Our own 
private con j ecture, now amounting almost to certainty, is 
that, safe-moored in some stillest obscurity, not to lie 
always still, Teufelsdrockh is actually in London ! 

Here, however, can the present Editor, with an am- 
brosial joy as of over-weariness falling into sleep, lay 
down his pen. Well does he know, if human testimony 
be worth aught, that to innumerable British readers 
likewise, this is a satisfying consummation; that in- 
numerable British readers consider him, during these 
current months, but as an uneasy interruption to their 
ways of thought and digestion; and indicate so much, 
not without a certain irritancy and even spoken in- 
vective. For which, as for other mercies, ought not he 
to thank the Upper Powers? To one and all of you, 
O irritated readers, he, with outstretched arms and 
open heart, will wave a kind farewell. Thou too, mirac- 
ulous Entity, who namest thyself Yorke and Oliver, 
and with thy vivacities and genialities, with thy ail-too 
Irish mirth and madness, and odor of palled punch, 
makest such strange work, farewell; long as thou canst, 
fare-well! Have we not, in the course of Eternity, 
traveled some months of our Life-journey in .partial 
sight of one another; have we not existed together, 
though in a state of quarrel? 



GLOSSARY 

Agora: Market-place. 

Ahrimanism : Worship of Ahriman, the principle of evil and 

darkness. 
Airts: Points of the compass. 
Allgemeine Zeitung: Universal Journal. 
Almack's: Famous assembly rooms built in King Street, St. 

James's, by William Almack, in 1764. Also called 

"Willis's" after Almack's successor. 
Apage Sataka: Get hence, Satan (Matt., IV. 10.). 
Armer Teufel: Poor beggar. 
Auscultator: Lawyer's assistant. 

Baphometic, from Baphomet, an imaginary idol supposed to 
have been worshiped by the Templars. 

Bazard-Enfanttn : Bazard and Enfantin were pupils of 
Saint-Simon, the French philosopher and sociologist. 

Beym Himmel ! : By Heaven! 

Bleibt doch ein echter, etc.: All the same he is a thorough- 
going buffoon and jail-bird. 

Buchan-Bullers: Referring to the Bullers of Buchan, a 
100 foot well in the granite shore near Peterhead in 
Aberdeenshire. 

Burin: The chief tool of the wooden-engraver. 

Busching, Anton Friedrich: Established the political-statistical 
method of geography. 

Cabalistico-Sartorial : Mysteriously concerned with clothes. 
Calenture: A disease caused by tropical heat. Sailors are 

especially susceptible to it because of their exposure to 

the heat and with them the ocean often appears as green 

fields during the delirium. 
Camisade: Night attack. 
Campus Martius: The field of Mars. A large military and 

athletic field outside Rome. 

267 



268 GLOSSARY 

Clotha vreuMauE cano: I sing of clothes and the man. A 

parody on the first line of the ^Eneid. 
Cogito ergosum: I think, therefore I am. The starting point 

of Descartes's philosophy. 
Congreve: A rocket used as a weapon, named for its inventor. 
Curragh: A hunting ground in the County Kildare, Ireland! 
Cursiv-schrift: Italics. 

Dalai-Lama: The Grand Lama or chief priest of Thibet; a 

Buddhist human-god. 
Das glattb' ich: I believe it. 
Doctor tttriitsqtte Juris: Doctor of both laws. 
Du Himmel!: Good heavens! 
Dumdrudge : A word coined by Carlyle from "dumb drudgery. ,, 

Edda: "A work written (in prose and verse) by Snorri Stur- 
luson (born 1178: died by assassination 1241) containing 
the old mythology of Scandinavia and the old rules for 
verse-making; also a collection of ancient Icelandic poems." 
Ancient Diet, of Names. 

El Dorado: "The Gilded One." 

Entepfuhl: Duck-pond. 

Erdgeist: Earth-Spirit. 

Ernulphus-cursings: cf. Tristram Shandy, Sterne, bk. Ill 
cap. XI. 

Estrapades: The Place de l'Estrapade in Paris, named for 
the "strappado" torture inflicted on Protestants there. 
The "strappado" consisted in hoisting the victim into the 
air and dropping him so as to dislocate his arms. 

Ew. Wohlgeboren: "Your Honor." 

Examen Rigorosum: The final law examination. 

Frisch zu Bruder: Be up and doing, Brother. 

Gallia Braccata: Name given to Gallia Narbonensis because 

of the costume of the people. Braccatus literally means 

"wearing breeches." 
Geeza: or Ghizeh, near Cairo. 
Gkadige Frau: Gracious Lady. 
Gowl: Ghoul. 
Gueitx: The league of Flemish nobles organized in 1566 to 

resist the introduction of the Inquisition into the Low 

Countries by Philip II. 



GLOSSARY 269 

Hadjee: A Mohammedan who has made the pilgrimage to 

Mecca. 
Haggis: "A dish made of a sheep's heart, lungs and liver 

minced with suet, onions, oatmeal, salt, and pepper, and 

boiled in a bag, usually the stomach of a sheep." Century 

Dictionary. 
Hallanshakers : Sturdy beggars. 
Harmattak: Desert wind. 
Hengst and Horsa: Jute chieftains; leaders of the invasion 

of Britain in the Fifth Century.- 
Heratjsgeber: Editor. 
Herr Teufelsdrockh wird von der Frau Grafinn, etc.: Frau 

Grafinn requests the pleasure of Herr Teufelsdrockh's 

presence at Aesthetic Tea on Thursday. 
Hinterschlag : "Smite Behind." The name is used by Carlyle 

for Annan Academy. 
Hofrath Heuschrecke: Privy-Councilor. Grasshopper. 
Horet ihr Herren, etc. "Listen, sirs, and let me tell you." 

A line from a folk song. 

Ignis Fatuus: A wandering flame. 
Infandtjm : Horrible; too horrible to speak of. 
In Petto: In secret. Used for a candidate for pope not openly 
declared by the College of Cardinals. 

Kuhbach: Cow Brook. 

Landgravine Elizabeth: St. Elizabeth of Hungary. 

Lilis: generally Lilith. Adam's first wife according to the 

Talmudists. 
Lingua-franca : Literally the Frank language. Carlyle uses 

it as a pun. 
Loretto-Shrine : Near Ancona, Italy, said to be the house in 

Nazareth in which Mary was born and brought up. 

Malzlein: A suburb of Vienna. 

Manicheism: The religion of the followers of Mani. Based 

on the old Babylonian religion of nature. 
Marchfeld: See Wagram. 
Miserere: The 50th Psalm in the Vulgate beginning "Miserere 

mei." 
Mochte es auch, etc.: May it flourish also on British soil. 



270 GLOSSARY 

Moesogothic Ulfila: A Gothic bishop who translated the 
Bible into Gothic. Missionary to the Gothic tribes in 
Moesia (hence Moesogothic). In Gothic "Wulnla." 

Montgolfier : Balloon invented by the Montgolfier brothers. 

Mumbo Jumbo: "Originally a bugbear common to Mandingo 
towns, used by the natives to keep the women in sub- 
jection." 

Novalis: Pseudonym of Friedrich von Hardenberg, a German 
mystic of the 18th century. 

Oken: Lorenz Ockenfuss, naturalist and professor of natural 
philosophy at Jena, early nineteenth century. 

Ophiuchus: An ancient constellation, also called Serpentarius, 
representing a man holding a serpent. 

Orbis pictus: An illustrated book by the Czechic theologian 
and reformer Comenius published at Niirnberg in 1657. 

Orte: see Airts. 

Palingenesia: Regeneration. 

Pawaw: Probably from "pow-wow" meaning priest, or medi- 
cine man. 

Peep-o'-Day Boys: An anti-Catholic society in Ireland which 
perpetrated their outrages at dawn, according to Froude's 
English in Ireland. 

Pelham, or the Adventures of a Gentleman, a novel by Lord 
Lytton. 

Peterloo: A riot at St. Peter's Field, Manchester, August 16, 
1819. 

Pierre Pertius: A hollow passage in the Rock in the Jura, 
Switzerland, near Bern. 

Potheen: Whiskey illegally distilled. 

Potwaixopers : One who prepares his own food. Applied to a 
class of voters in England before the passage of the Re- 
form Bill of 1832, who were entitled to vote after 6 
months' residence in a Borough. 

Qtjangfoutchee : Confucius. 

Rabenstein: Gallows. Literally raven-stone. 

Ragfair: A street of London notorious for its squalor. 

Relatio ex Actis: Official report. 



GLOSSARY 271 

Ribbonmen: A secret society similar to the Orangemen but 

hostile to them. Organized in 1808. 
Rockites: "Captain Rock" was a name often signed to inthmv-. 

dating letters. 
Runic: or runick meaning Norse or Scandinavian. 

Sacchara: or Sakkara, near Cairo. 

Sachs, Hans: A German poet of the 16th Century. 

Sanchoniathon : A supposed Phenecian writer whose works 

Philo Byblius pretended to have translated. 
Sanhedrim: The Jewish National Council. 
Sans-culottism : from sans-culotte, a name applied to the 

proletariat in the French Revolution. Literally "without 

breeches." 
Schlosskirche : The chapel of a castle. 
Schonbrtjnn: A royal palace outside Vienna. 
Schreckhorn: Peak of Terror. A common mountain name. 
Shasters: The authoritative religious and legal books of the 

Hindus. From S'astra, a book. 
Sic itur ad astra: "Thus is immortality gained." 
Sic vos non vobis: "Thus do ye but not for yourselves." At- 
tributed to Virgil. 
Siecle de Louis Quinze : Age of Louis XV. 
Steinbruch : Quarry. 
Stillfrieds: Armistices. Referring to the armistice following 

Napoleon's victory at Wagram. 
Stileschweigen und Co0 nfe : Silence and Co. 
Stiixschweigen'sche Buchhandeung: Might be translated 

"The 'Keep it Dark' Bookstore." 

Talapoin: A monk in a Buddhist monastery. 

Tattersali/s: A London horse-market. 

Teufel: devil. 

Teufelsdrockh : asafoetida. Literally, devil's dung. 

Teusinkf/: A silver girdle hung with little bells. 

Triesnitz: Near Jena. The tree referred to is that under 

which Goethe and Schiller used to sit and talk. 
Trismegistus : literally "thrice greatest." Hermes Trismegis- 

tus is the Greek name of the Egyptian God Thoth, alleged! 

author of 42 encyclopedic works on Egypt. 

Ude: Louis Eustache Ude, a famous French cook. 



272 GLOSSARY 

Vaucltjse: Valla Chiusa near Avignon. 
Verehrtester : Most honored. 

Vermachtniss : inheritance. Goethe's lines, translated by Car- 
lyle, read: 

"My inheritance, how wide and fair; 
Time is my estate; to time I'm heir." 

The motto is prefaced to "Wilhelm Meister." 

Wagram: Scene of Napoleon's defeat of the Austrians. 
town in the Marchfeld near Vienna. 

Wahngasse : Dream- Alley. 

Wains : Wagons. 

Waldschloss : Forest castle. 

Weasand: Windpipe. 

Weissnichtwo : Know not where. 

Weissnichtwo'sche Anzeiger: The "Know not Where" Ad- 
vertiser; the newspaper of Weissnichtwo. 

Wissekschaftslehre : Theory of Science. 

Wo steckt doch der Schalk: Where is the rascal hiding. 

Yorke, Oliver: Pseudonym assumed by William Maginn as 
Editor of Fraser. 

Zahdarm: A translation of "Toughgut." 

Zeitkurzende Lijst: The full title of Paulinus' (rightly 
Paullini) book is Zeitkilrzende erbauliche Lust; literally: 
Entertaining, edifying Pleasure. 

Zerdusht: Zarathustra, founder of the Perso-Iranian national 
religion which prevailed from about 559 B. C. to 636 A. D. 
Pronounced by the Greeks Zoroaster. 

Zinzendorf: Nikolaus, Count von Zinzendorf. A German re- 
ligious reformer, reviver and organizer of the Moravian 
Church. 

,Zur Grunen Ganz: At the Green Goose; a tavern in Munich. 



THE MODERN 
STUDENT'S LIBRARY 

Each volume edited with an introduction by a leading 
American authority 



This series is composed of such works as are conspicuous in the 
province of literature for their enduring influence. Every volume 
is recognized as essential to a liberal education and will tend to in- 
fuse a love for true literature and an appreciation of the qualities 
which cause it to endure. 



A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND 

MERRIMAC RIVERS 

By Henry David Thoreatj 

With an Introduction by 
ODELL SHEPARD 

Professor of English at Trinity College 

"... Here was a man who stood with his head in the clcuds, 
perhaps, but with his feet firmly planted on rubble and grit. He 
was true to the kindred points of Heaven and Home. Thoreau's 
eminently practical thought was really concerned, in the last anal- 
ysis with definite human problems. The major question how to live 
was at the end of all his vistas." 

EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

Selected and edited, with an Introduction, by 
ARTHUR HOBSON QUINN 

Professor of English and Dean of the College University of 
Pennsylvania 

'* Among the shifting values in our literary history, Emerson stands 
secure. As a people we are rather prone to underestimate our native 
writers in relation to English and continental authors, but even 
among those who have been content to treat our literature as a by- 
product of British letters, Emerson's significance has become only 
more apparent with time." 



THE MODERN STUDENT'S LIBRARY 

THE ESSAYS OF 
ADDISON AND STEELE 

Selected and edited by 
WILL D. HOWE 

Professor of English at Indiana University 






With the writings of these two remarkable essayists modern prose 
began. It is not merely that their style even to-day, after two cen- 
turies, commands attention, it is equally noteworthy that these 
men were among the first to show the possibilities of our language 
in developing a reading public. 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND 
JONATHAN EDWARDS 

With an Introduction by 
CARL VAN DOREN 

Franklin and Edwards often sharply contrasted in thought are, 
however, in the main, complimentary to each other. In religion, 
Franklin was the utilitarian, Edwards the mystic. Franklin was 
more interested in practical morality than in revelation; Edwards 
sought a spiritual exaltation in religious ecstasy. In science Frank- 
lin was the practical experimenter, Edwards the detached observer, 
the theoretical investigator of causes. 

THE 
HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN 

By Sir Walter Scott 

With an Introduction by 
WILLIAM P. TRENT 

Professor of English at Columbia University 

Universally admitted one of the world's greatest story-tellers, 
Scott himself considered "The Heart of Midlothian" his master- 
piece, and it has been accepted as such by most of his admirers. 



TEE MODERN STUDENTS LIBRARY 

THE ORDEAL OF 
RICHARD FEVEROEL 

By George Meredith 

With an Introduction by 
FRANK W. CHANDLER 

Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati 

"The Ordeal of Richard Feverel," published in 1859, was Mere- 
dith's first modern novel and probably his best. Certainly it was, 
and has remained, the most generally popular of all this author's 
books and among the works of its type it stands pre-eminent. The 
story embodies in the most beautiful form the idea that in life the 
vhole truth and nothing but the truth is best. 

MEREDITH'S 
ESSAY ON COMEDY 

With an Introduction, Notes, and Biographical Sketch by 
LANE COOPER 

Professor of English at Cornell University 

"Good comedies," Meredith tells us, "are such rare productions 
that, notwithstanding the wealth of our literature in the comic 
element, it would not occupy us long to run over the English list." 

The "Essay on Comedy" is in a peculiarly intimate way the ex- 
position of Meredith's attitude toward life and art. It helps us to 
understand more adequately the subtle delicacies of his novels. 

CRITICAL ESSAYS OF THE 
NINETEENTH CENTURY 

Selected and edited, with an Introduction, by 
RAYMOND M. ALDEN 

Professor of English at Leland Stanford University 

The essays in this volume include those of Wordsworth, Copleston, 
Jeffrey, Scott, Coleridge, Lockhart, Lamb, Hazlitt, Byron, Shelley, 
Newman, DeQuincey, Macaulay, Wilson, and Hunt. 




THE MODERN STUDENTS LIBRARY 

ENGLISH POETS OF THE 
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 

Selected and Edited by 
ERNEST BERNBAUM 

Professor of English at the University of Illinois 

The great age of the eighteenth century is, more than any other, 
perhaps, mirrored in its poetry, and this anthology reveals its maa- 
ners and ideals. , 

While the text of the various poems is authentic, it is not bur- 
dened with scholastic editing and marginal comment. The collec- 
tion and its form is one which satisfies in an unusual way the in- 
terest of the general reader as well as that of the specialist. 

PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 
By John Bunyan 

With an Introduction and Notes by 
DR. S. M. CROTHERS 

This book is one of the most vivid and entertaining in the English 
language, one that has been read more than any other in our lan- 
guage, except the Bible. 

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE 
By Jane Austen 

With an Introduction by 
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS 

To have this masterpiece of realistic literature introduced by so 
eminent a critic as William Dean Howells is, in itself, an event in 
the literary world. We cannot better comment upon the edition 
than by quoting from Mr. Howells' s introduction: 

He says: "When I came to read the book the tenth or fifteenth 
time for the purposes of this introduction, I found it as fresh as when 
I read it first in 1889, after long shying off from it." 



THE MODERN STUDENTS LIBRARY 

NINETEENTH CENTURY 
LETTERS 

Selected and Edited by 
BYRON JOHNSON REES 

Professor of English at Williams College 

Contains letters from William Blake, William Wordsworth, 
Sydney Smith, Robert Southey, Charles Lamb, Washington Irving, 
Benjamin Robert Haydon, John Keats, Jane Welsh Carlyle, Ralph 
Waldo Emerson, John Sterling, Abraham Lincoln, William Make- 
peace Thackeray, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Matthew Arnold, 
Thomas Henry Huxley, George Meredith, "Lewis Carroll," Phillips 
Brooks, Sidney Lanier, and Robert Louis Stevenson. 

PAST AND PRESENT 

By Thomas Carlyle 

With an Introduction by 
EDWIN W. MIMS 

Professor of English at Vanderbilt University 

"Past and Present," written in 1843, when the industrial revolu- 
tions had just taken place in England and when democracy and 
freedom were the watchwords of liberals and progressives, reads like 
a contemporary volume on industrial and social problems. 

BOSWELL'S 
LIFE OF JOHNSON 

Abridged and edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by 
CHARLES G. OSGOOD 

Professor of English at Princeton University 

Boswell has created one of the great masterpieces of the world. 

Seldom has an abridgment been made with as great skill in omit- 
ting nothing vital and keeping proper proportions as this edition by 
Professor Osgood. 



THE MODERN STUDENT'S LIBRARY 



BACON'S ESSAYS 

Selected, with an Introduction and Notes, by 
MARY AUGUSTA SCOTT 

Late Professor of English Literature at Smith College 



the 



These essays, the distilled wisdom of a great observer upon the 
affairs of common life, are of endless interest and profit. The more 
one reads them the more remarkable seem their compactness and 
their vitality. 

ADAM BEDE 

By George Eliot 

With an Introduction by 
LAURA J. WYLIE 

Professor of English at Vassar College 

With the publication of "Adam Bede" in 1859, it was evident 
both to England and America that a great novelist had appeared. 
"Adam Bede" is the most natural of George Eliot's books, simple 
in problem, direct in action, with the freshness and strength of the 
Derbyshire landscape and character and speech in its pages. 



THE RING AND THE BOOK 
By Robert Browning 

With an Introduction by 
FREDERICK MORGAN PADELFORD 

Professor of English at Washington University 

" 'The Ring and the Book,' " says Dr. Padelford in his introduc- 
tion, "is Browning's supreme literary achievement. It was written 
after the poet had attained complete mastery of his very individual 
style; it absorbed his creative activity for a prolonged period; and it 
issued with the stamp of his characteristic genius on every page." 



THE MODERN STUDENT'S LIBRARY 

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON'S 

ESSAYS 

With an Introduction by 
WILLIAM LYON PHELPS 

Professor of English at Yale University 

This volume includes not only essays in formal literary criticism, 
but also of personal monologue and gossip, as well as philosophical 
essays on the greatest themes that can occupy the mind of man. All 
reveal the complex, whimsical, humorous, romantic, imaginative, 
puritanical personality now known everywhere by the formula 
R. L. S. 

PENDENNIS 
By Thackeray 

With an Introduction by 
ROBERT MORSS LOVETT 

Professor of English at the University of Chicago 

"Pendennis" stands as a great representative of biographical 
fiction and reflects more of the details of Thackeray's life than all 
his other writings. Of its kind there is probably no more interesting 
book in our^literature. 

THE 
RETURN OF THE NATIVE 

By Thomas Hardy 

With an Introduction and Notes by 
JOHN W. CUNLIFFE 

Professor of English at Columbia University 

"The Return of the Native" is probably Thomas Hardy's great 
tragic masterpiece. It carries to the highest perfection the rare 
genius of the finished writer. It presents in the most remarkable 
way Hardy's interpretation of nature in which there is a perfect 
unison between the physical world and the human character. 



THE MODERN STUDENT'S LIBRARY 



SELECTIONS FROM 
"THE FEDERALIST" 

Edited with an Introduction by 
JOHN SPENCER BASSETT 

Professor of History in Smith College 

A careful and discriminating selection of the "Essays written in 
favor of the new constitution, as agreed upon by the federal con- 
vention, September 17, 1787." 

HISTORICAL ESSAYS 
By Lord Macatjlay 

Selected with an Introduction by 
CHARLES DOWNER HAZEN 

Professor of History at Columbia' University 

A group of the better-known historical essays which includes "John 
Hampden," "William Pitt," "The Earl of Chatham," "Lord Clive," 
"Warren Hastings," "Machiavelli," and "Frederick the Great." 

SARTOR RESARTUS 

By Thomas Carlyle 

Edited with an Introduction by 
ASHLEY THORNDIKE 

Professor of English at Columbia University 

This "Nonsense on Clothes," as Carlyle referred to it in one entry 
of his journal, reaches into all the human realm and is perhaps the 
greatest philosophical expression of Carlyle's genius. Surely there 
is a power of pure thought which he has put into the mind of Pro- 
fessor Tempelsdroch and a charm of words which he has given him 
fo speak which he has nowhere surpassed. 

A glossary in this edition will be of invaluable service to the 
student. 



THE MODERN STUDENTS LIBRARY 

RUSKIN'S 
' SELECTIONS AND ESSAYS 

With an Introduction by 
FREDERICK WILLIAM ROE 

Assistant Professor of English at University of Wisconsin 

"Ruskin," said John Stuart Mill, "was one of the few men in 
Europe who seemed to draw what he said from a source within him- 
self." Carlyle delighted in the "fierce lightning bolts" that Ruskin 
was "copiously and desperately pouring into the black world of 
anarchy all around him." 

The present volume, by its wide selection from Ruskin's writings, 
affords an unusual insight into this remarkable man's interests and 
character. 

THE SCARLET LETTER 

By Nathaniel Hawthorne 

With an Introduction by 
STUART P. SHERMAN 

Professor of English at University of Illinois 

" 'The Scarlet Letter' appears to be as safe from competitors 
as 'Pilgrim's Progress' or 'Robinson Crusoe.' It is recognized as 
the classical treatment of its particular theme. Its symbols and 
scenes of guilt and penitence — the red letter on the breast of Hester 
Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale on the scaffold — have fixed themselves 
in the memory of men like the figure of Crusoe bending over the 
footprints in the sand, and have become a part of the common stock 
of images like Christian facing the lions in the way. 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 



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